The Magicians Guild

I have started reading the Magicians Guild. It is the first book of the Black Magician trilogy. In the beginning of the story it doesn't really give you any background; you are just thrown into a scene and you are slowly introduced to characters as they arrive in the story. I thought this was a nice approach but it did lead to some confusion at time. I would find myself going back a few paragraphs or even a few pages to try and get the characters sorted out. I kept feeling like I needed to reread; like I had missed something. I would also get confused whenever the writer would switch from one story line in one paragraph and then jump to another one in the very next paragraph. Sometimes when this happened I wouldn't realize it and would get confused about which characters I was currently reading about. The way it was written reminded me of a film. For example in a movie a cut to a different time line would be completely normal. You don't need any cluse or dividers because you see it visually. The idea of dropping the reader into the story without any background also reminded me of a film. Just last week I went and saw the new James Bond movie and that is exactly how it started out. It just dropped the viewer into an action scene without any background and let you find your way as you go. Even though I did get a bit confused a times I really found myself sucked into the story. So far there are no boring parts to this story. It has basically been non stop action the entire time. Because it doesn't really take time to explain everything and lets you just discover things as you go, it feels very fast paced and keeps my attention quite easily.