The Rogue by Trudi Canavan, UK edition cover.

Title: The Rogue (Book Two of the Traitor Spy Trilogy)

Author:  Trudi Canavan

Genre: Sword and Sorcery

Publisher:  Orbit (5th May 2011)

Blurb:

Living among the Sachakan rebels, Lorkin does his best to learn about them and their unique magic. But the Traitors are reluctant to trade their secrets for the Healing they so desperately want and, while Lorkin assumes they fear revealing their existence to the world, there are hints they have bigger plans.

Meanwhile, Sonea searches for the rogue, knowing that Cery cannot avoid assassination for ever, but the rogue’s influence over the city’s underworld is far greater than she feared. His only weakness is the loss of his mother, now locked away in the Lookout.

In Sachaka, Lord Dannyl has lost the respect of the Sachakan elite for allowing Lorkin to join the Traitors. The Ashaki’s attention shifted, instead, to the new Elyne Ambassador – a man Dannyl knows all too well.

And in the University, two female novices are about the remind the Guild that sometimes their greatest enemy is found within . . .

Rating:*** (3 stars)

Review:

The Rogue is the second book in Trudi Canavan’s Traitor Spy Trilogy, which is sent twenty years after the events of her Black Magician Trilogy. This means that there are plenty of familiar faces and places, for those who have read Canavan’s previous works, but we are also introduced to some new ones in this book.

As the blurb indicates, the storyline is split into four separate threads which means that there is a lot of jumping about. However, I did not find this to be a bad thing as it meant there was always something going on and no real quite spots in the overall plot of the book. I did find this book hard to get back into though as it has been over a year since I’ve read anything in this ‘verse, but once I got back into it I found the pages flying by. I enjoyed getting re-acquainted with characters that had been introduced in The Ambassador’s Mission. It was also interesting meeting the new ones.

The plotlines were fairly compelling, but this book does suffer from Middle Book Syndrome. However, if you’ve got this far into the trilogy you shouldn’t let that put you off as the book is an enjoyable read despite this. There are a lot of plot threads hinted at and explored in the book.  There are definite hints that the final book in the trilogy Traitor’s Queen will be an interesting read when it is published in August 2012.