I quite enjoyed reading it, but was a bit let down in the end. I like LitRPG. Gaining skills and leveling up is so much fun. But in the end this book is nothing beyond that. I was hoping for more. I could be playing a video game myself instead of reading about someone else playing it, you know?

The book has an intriguing start that foreshadows a much more complex story. But apparently that's saved for book #20 or so. There is no progress at all on that background story in this book! I feel cheated!

Actually I would be fine with that. Two things could save the book easily for me. Good characters. There is a small roster of characters, but no friendships form. Something is wrong with the main character. He's looking at humans as tools to be used. He even tortures a guy. This is never acknowledged as an issue, so maybe the author doesn't recognize it? Anyway, this makes it hard for relationships to form, and so there is no character-driven drama.

The other thing that could save the book is clever use of abilities. If we're all about game mechanics, let's run with that! But that all falls flat. He gets a useful (if cliché) ability. He uses it. It works! Level up. Another ability. It works as well! From page to page this works well, but I'm left waiting for him actually doing something unexpected. It never happens.

The book actually tries in the final battle. But the only improvement over the "get ability — use ability" formula is that it's "get ability — don't mention it for a long time — use ability". Also the final battle is about something that we never cared about through the rest of the book, so I wasn't invested in it at all.

There is one scene that I liked: It's falling in the hole and becoming a Jumplomancer. It's a fun class. It's surprising. It relies on an ability that we knew about, but haven't seen in action yet, and didn't know would work like this. It involves some quick thinking and luck on the part of Joe. Just stuff the book full of that and it would be fine!

To explain where I'm coming from, Sufficiently Advanced Magic has lots of friendships, lots of clever use of mechanics, and fair attempts at humor.

I think the book may have something political to say too, that I'm wary of. "Your quest is to genocide this other people. Don't forget the women and children!" "No problem, boss!" I'm hoping they won't actually do it. (They just get the quest in this book.) But why not devote one sentence to acknowledging that this may not be the right thing to do? Say "Joe raised an eyebrow at that."

Another case is Joe thinking "Equality of outcome was tyrannical." It's absolutely not what the problem is at the mage's college. They have an evil artifact and archmage mind-controlling everyone. Sounds more like a slogan? Yeah, searching for it I get "Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, and Jordan Peterson to decry equality of outcome as a thinly veiled guise for tyranny and oppression." Damnit.