The Iron Trial
core novel 2014 Magisterium
Record
| First published | 2014 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.96 (82,994 ratings, collected 2026-08-21) |
| Page count | 295 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780545522250 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
The Iron Trial is the first novel in the Magisterium series by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare. It follows twelve-year-old Callum "Call" Hunt, who has been raised by his father Alastair to fear and reject magic entirely, a legacy of the losses his family suffered during the Third Mage War against an enemy known as the Enemy of Death, whose true identity as the mage Constantine Madden claimed the life of Call's mother. Despite his father's wishes, Call is required to sit the entrance test for the Magisterium, a secretive underground academy where young mages are trained in the four elemental magics of fire, water, air and earth, and where he deliberately tries to fail in hopes of avoiding admission altogether.
Where it sits
- Universe: Magisterium
- Series: Magisterium core; position 1 of 5 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Holly Black
- Author: Cassandra Clare
Notes
- From the series record (Magisterium): A complete five-book middle-grade series co-written by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, both already credited elsewhere in this canon (Folk of the Air/Spiderwick and the Shadowhunter Chronicles respectively) for different, unrelated work; no author-record duplication involved.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Magisterium: position 1 of 5: next The Copper Gauntlet (2015)
Sources
← Magisterium dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.