Sufficiently Advanced Magic (Arcane Ascension Book 1)

Wow. So, what I write here may be partially colored by my newness to the LitRPG genre (I had previously only read Ready Player One, which I didn’t much care for) but this was a lovely nostalgia filled time for me. Back in the day (I am old-ish), when I was in my late teens, I played an MMO called Everquest, on the RP server (stay with me, I swear it’s relevant). And something we used to do there was write stories about our characters. Lots and lots of stories, in which we found fun little ways to explain away the game’s mechanics. Levels became “seasons”, that sort of thing. LitRPG seems to be a sort of evolution of that – my generation, who grew up on DnD, MUSHes, MUDs and MMOs are now writing novels that resemble the games we used to inhabit, but also inventing the worlds from scratch. Pretty damn neat! In Sufficiently Advanced Magic, our protagonist is Corin Cadence. He’s entering the Serpent Spire – a testing ground full of traps, monsters and puzzles – to be tested for the first time, in order to gain an attunement that will grant him his first set of magical powers. After that, he’ll head off to a magical academy to hone his craft. But Corin also has another motive. Years ago, his older brother entered the Spire and never returned – Corin is determined to find him. As is so often the way in fantasy novels, things don’t go quite to plan. One of the strengths of Sufficiently Advanced Magic is that while it’s tightly plotted and cleverly written, it’s also unabashedly good fun. It’s clearly a book by a nerd, for nerds. The magic system is detailed and intricate enough to please the most ardent of Brandon Sanderson fans, and the trials and tribulations that Corin faces just trying to create a simple magical item are pretty damned hilarious. It’s a personal pet peeve of mine when a protagonist is too damned good at everything too quickly, so I find it appeals to me on that level. Corin struggles, really bloody struggles, and makes mistakes. His mistakes even make sense, and the blanks are then filled in for him by those with a stronger knowledge of the fundamentals. It’s truly a well thought out system. Corin is a very interesting character – I’m not 100% clear on it, but it appears he may be on the spectrum – he has a clear aversion to being touched and is very, very introverted. He is reluctant to even attempt to make friends, let alone share his thoughts and fears with them. It’s a nice change from the ultra-confident, cocky lead that I personally have come to find a bit tiresome over the years. Then there are the secondary characters. I’m not going to go into much detail because I think it’s nice to discover them as the story trundles along, but they are a likable and pretty well developed bunch, and I’m going to put it out there that Marissa was a particular favorite, along with the delightfully snarky Professor Vellum and the Magical Book Entity. It interested me that there was a sort of caste system within the society that was mentioned quite a bit, but never fully addressed – Marissa was of a lower caste, but she was portrayed as one of the bravest, most powerful characters of Corin’s acquaintance and though she seemed very aware of “her place”, the other characters didn’t seem to notice their own privilege (partly through ignorance and partly because they were nice people and it didn’t occur to them to treat her differently, I suspect). I’m curious if there will be more about that in the sequels because it was an intriguing idea. There were also the summoned creatures, who had strong personalities and some of whom were absolutely hilarious – in no small part due to the fabulous performance of Nick Podehl in the audiobook, which I highly recommend. The plotting and pacing is strong and coherent, with strong worldbuilding and good characters who were all reasonably well developed (and one presumes will become more so with each new entry in the series). I suspect readers who are not and have never been gamers may be a little put off by some infodumps regarding the world’s magic and crafting systems, but otherwise this is a great read with some lovely twists, a solid ending and a great audiobook. Go nuts guys, this one’s a keeper.

This is a pretty quirky (in a good sense) book in a fantasy subgenre I was previously not familiar with - LitRPG. It's basically a well-written novelization of a new character in a fantasy RPG, but not in a Warhammer or World of Warcraft way. The RPG portion influence of the book plays out in the highly structured magical system of the book as well as how the students in the novel learn and grow more powerful. There are a few basics to the world building that come out as the setup of the RPG-style world pretty quickly. Throughout the nations of our world there are six scattered giant towers, each of which house a visage of the deity (there's some speculation about what the visages actually are, but you can read the book for that). Adolescents or young adults can enter a tower for a Judgment (basically a beginner dungeon crawl). You can die in these Judgments, so they are serious matters, but if you succeed in your Judgment challenge you can earn an attunement from the deity of the tower. Attunements work much like choosing a profession in a game, except the deity is choosing for you. Each tower has eight possible attunements, some focus on physical/melee fighting, some focus on offensive magical spells of different types, summoning monsters, healing, creating magical items, etc. Each of the towers have their own sets of attunements an the skills that come with each one are nuanced although they may have overlapping skills with another tower's attunement of a similar type. Further going along with the RPG style theme, once you gain an attunement you also now have an affinity for two flavors of magic (primary and secondary) that go with your attunement type. Magic can be all kinds of "types" such as life, air, fire, earth, transference, mental, enhancement, etc. Lastly, as you gain more skill in your attunement your mana increases and you move up in ranks that are delineated by gemstone levels (quarts, carnelian, sunstone, citrine, emerald, sapphire). This kind of very systematic world building (similar to the branching and skill management of many RPG games) also makes an appearance in the adventuring in the narrative as during the dungeon crawl sections we see a lot of color-coded portals, etc. We also see the appearance of monsters that are both familiar to RPG players but also creative. There's a moment where a slime monster drops a pickaxe that cracked me up - it was so typical of the random junk loot that low level monsters drop in games! On to the actual story!! Our protagonist is Corin Cadence, the young heir of House Cadence. When Corin's elder brother Tristan went for his Judgment he never came out of the tower and is presumed dead, but it's not certain that he is dead. Locating Tristan is one of Corin's main motivations throughout the book. When Corin goes for his Judgment he receives an attunement he was not expecting (focusing on making magical items) rather than a more straight forward combat skill attunement. When Corin enters the tower for his Judgment, he gets tangled up in a plot that was far beyond what most experience during their Judgment and develops further over the course of the novel. After the initial dungeon crawl we see Corin enter the magic school (Lorian Heights) and get an introduction to other students and professors. The other students include some friends Corin knew from his prior schooling (although his father had pulled him out of school for the last few years and tutored him privately) and, most interestingly, Sera Cadence who was raised to be Corin's retainer, but is all of a sudden a contender with him for heir due to their father's legitimizing Sera. Corin's circle of friends and professors at the school are genuinely interesting characters and help flesh out the world building as they each have different skills and abilities. It's also great having a protagonist that has to be a little more creative in his solutions to things (even if not always successful) since his skill is now for making magical items. In the game sense he's more of a support class than a front line fighter - valuable for how he can help the rest of the party but not fantastic as a solo player. Corin as a character has some interesting issues that are hinted at (social anxiety, aversion to touch, deep fear of mental damage) that are definitely present and somewhat explored, but the history is not laid out for the reader. There are many depths left to explore with this character. The book has a couple of dungeon crawl phases, quite a lot of magic school time, and a lot of preparing for the dungeon time as well as some random other adventurers. It's pretty well-rounded and will be a satisfying read especially for readers who are looking for a very regimented magical system as well as those who like the call backs to prevalent gaming systems. The book had a satisfying plot conclusion but also left quite a lot of room to explore the narrative further in the sequel and I'm looking forward to reading it when it comes out!

This book was great, very entertaining fantasy book with a great magic system, young characters which are my favorites since they can have a lot of character. An amazing plot with all the right twists and great development. I feel the characters could have been more fleshed, but i think the next books can fix that. Some people may complain about too much exposition, but it felt right to me. Also that 1 year cliffhanger is killing me.

After finishing the Cradle series by Will Wight , I didn't think I'd find a series just as good. I am glad I stumbled upon this. Can't wait to finish the story

great fantasy book from an amazing indie self-published author.

Lots of twists turns and love the whole mmorpg sort of layout of the book. I would have liked to see more of the interpersonal relationships between the main characters but other than that i loved it and would definitely recommend it to anyone with a love for reading fantasy. It's unique and has a solid base for continuing the story.

Very enjoyable read! It feels like a mystery novel in a world with magic or in this case mana. You're left questioning motives for each character and learning about the side characters through very natural feeling dialogue. I found that the main character was snarky but not mean, and there was some clear character growth, in the main character, as the relationships between the main character and side characters were explored. The side characters are very likeable and we have equal time with each of them. It's very much a magic school story, with dungeon crawling mixed in. I find myself wanting to unravel more lore.