Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe – Review

Published: February 26, 2017

Publisher: Self-Published

Series: Arcane Ascension #1

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 621 (Kindle Edition)

My Rating: 4.5/5.0

 

Synopsis:

Five years ago, Corin Cadence’s brother entered the Serpent Spire — a colossal tower with ever-shifting rooms, traps, and monsters. Those who survive the spire’s trials return home with an attunement: a mark granting the bearer magical powers. According to legend, those few who reach the top of the tower will be granted a boon by the spire’s goddess.

He never returned.

Now, it’s Corin’s turn. He’s headed to the top floor, on a mission to meet the goddess.

If he can survive the trials, Corin will earn an attunement, but that won’t be sufficient to survive the dangers on the upper levels. For that, he’s going to need training, allies, and a lot of ingenuity.

The journey won’t be easy, but Corin won’t stop until he gets his brother back.

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Sufficiently Advanced Magic is another book that I ignored for far too long. It had been lingering in my Audible suggestions for many long months and I didn’t consider it for a number of reasons until it placed well in the most recent SPFBO competition. Any book that places well there is definitely worth a second look because they’ve run the gauntlet so to speak and the weaker members of the herd have been culled. It’s almost guaranteed to be a quality read by that point, so you’ve really got nothing to lose.

The first thing that came to mind when I began this book was that the video game influence was strong with this one. Essentially, you’ve got a magic school, a magic tower dungeon, powerful beasties to fight, and levels to reach. It’s just like an RPG and it’s one that I would totally play! I loved the whole idea of it and found the story to be immensely entertaining from start to finish. There’s a well thought out plot, subplot, and worldbuilding that has strong potential that I predict will be further unlocked in future installments.

The main character in Sufficiently Advanced Magic is Corin Cadence, youngest son of a noble house who’s about to go in for his mage trial to get his attunement. This isn’t a walk in the park and people have been known to die or go missing in there, Corin’s brother included. He has to pass, otherwise he’ll never be able to do tower climbs in hopes of reaching the top and having a wish granted. Thus begins our story… Following the initial (and unusually eventful) tower run, Corin has to go to mage school, because when you have untested powers that need to be honed that’s just what you do. Fortunately, he’s not alone and has his sister Sera there as well as several childhood friends that he had fallen out of touch with. He has to balance classes, friendships, and his growing list of other burdens which is primarily what this book focuses on. Yeah, there are threads woven into this, but it’s mostly a magic school book which I personally really like. The extra bits make it better and help it to stand out from the crowd a bit.

Corin is an interesting character – he’s pretty socially introverted and seems to go days without talking to anyone, he definitely needs to work on his people skills and he realizes that flaw of his. He’s also not really a leader figure, but much more of the ideas guy. He has to be clever because he isn’t a powerful mage at all, much to the consternation of his famed warrior-mage family. I like that he isn’t perfect and it takes him multiple attempts to get things right-ish and sometimes he bemoans his situation. He’s not a stoic, perfect, powerful hero figure, but more of the everyman character. The supporting characters are all pretty fascinating as well. His sister Sera is a powerful mage and I would consider her a solid, reliable friend/sister. Patrick (that was his name right?) is also a terribly loyal friend to Corin, despite them having spent years apart when Corin began private tutoring. Jin is probably the most interesting because of his air of mystery. You never really know what he’s up to or who’s side he’s really on or even what his attunement is. He kept me guessing for the entire book and I surely hope I get some more answers in the next installment.

Overall, Sufficiently Advanced Magic was an awesomely fun LitRPG style book. It was pretty long, but I never found myself getting bored or looking forward to the end. As a matter of fact, once I did finish it I went ahead and picked up the second book with the hope of getting to it in the near future. Not sure if that will actually happen, but a girl can dream, right? I would call this book a mixture of Senlin Ascends (because big tower puzzle), The Name of the Wind (magic school), and World of Warcraft (because magic, leveling, dungeon runs etc.). It was really cool and I think it’s placement in the SPFBO was well earned.