There's an audiobook which is kind of famously bad, no wonder if you bounced off that one! If you skim past the beginning of the first one, you'll get the Magical School trope, perhaps that might interest you as a comparison point to other, later such books?

As for me, I'm captured by the lovely prose every time. : )

ETA: Wait, aren't you into fealty stuff, or am I mixing you up with someone else? There's great fealty in the third book, even a sort of mutual fealty, between the young king-to-be and the older mage.