Daniel Darabos reviewed Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe (Arcane Ascension, #1)
Review of 'Sufficiently Advanced Magic' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I don't think I have read any LitRPG before. From this one sample it looks like this genre works for me!
Yes, it's very much like someone is playing a video game. More than half the book is about how much mana they have, how far they are from reaching the next level, what spells they can cast, what equipment they are carrying, monsters, secret doors, dungeon puzzles, traps, color-coded keys...
But then the main character has more freedom than you do in a video game. And they make constant use of that. What if I make a lasso from my rope? What if I bottle up some water from the magical fountain? What if I try chatting with the monster?
I know you can do all that in a tabletop RPG too. And I think the book is based on an actual RPG campaign. But it has a few …
I don't think I have read any LitRPG before. From this one sample it looks like this genre works for me!
Yes, it's very much like someone is playing a video game. More than half the book is about how much mana they have, how far they are from reaching the next level, what spells they can cast, what equipment they are carrying, monsters, secret doors, dungeon puzzles, traps, color-coded keys...
But then the main character has more freedom than you do in a video game. And they make constant use of that. What if I make a lasso from my rope? What if I bottle up some water from the magical fountain? What if I try chatting with the monster?
I know you can do all that in a tabletop RPG too. And I think the book is based on an actual RPG campaign. But it has a few advantages over an RPG: 1) you can read it alone, 2) you don't have to put in any creativity, 3) it's distilled down to the good parts, and 4) it's set in a pretty cool original world.
The world looks like a typical fantasy at a glance. Elementalists, summoners, healers, nobles, kingdoms, magic weapons, monsters, goddesses. And the protagonist goes to magic school. They have quirky professors and exciting exams. There's magical dodgeball.
Like Harry Potter. But like in The Methods of Rationality, our hero is super cautious and super inquisitive. And when you scratch the surface, everything has cool original explanations. Where does magic come from? Where do monsters come from?
More than that, everyone is a bit of a rationalist here. You can patent enchantments. A mana-powered train crosses the continent. Magical research and experiments are everywhere.
Magical research into the very nature of magic and the immortals of the world is at the heart of the plot too. It seems like a great plot, lot's of mysteries to unravel. With so much going on we don't get very far in the unraveling before the book ends. But it sets up the story very nicely for the later volumes.
There's a cast of characters too. A lot of pages are filled with their funny banter and teenage drama. It's not very ambitious (I don't expect a stage adaptation), but I found it quite enjoyable.
