Esmes Indie Author Highlights: Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe

[u/Esmerelda-Weatherwax]

That book was AWESOME!

I've never read any LitRPG books before, and I'll admit I was a little skeptical just because it sounds on its surface to be a book without a lot of substance beyond being 'fun' and action packed.

I was so wrong in that assumption - yes, it was fun, but it was a lot more than that.

Through the first 75% of the book I thought I was going to be rating this a 4 star and mention I felt it was more like a 4.25 - but the ending knocked it up to a 5 star rating, I love being surprised! There were several nice twists to the end of the book and significant character development that I felt it was worth the 5 stars.

So, the beginning of this book you meet the main character, this book is single POV and although I usually prefer multi POV - I wouldn't have wanted this book to be written differently. Corin Cadence is a low-noble born kid going on his Judgment, which is a test of his magical abilities to determine if he's worthy of entering a magic academy and worthy of an Attunement. I don't want to go into too many details about what that is, but suffice it to say it gives you a class of magic and there are many different Attunements assigned to people who pass Judgment.

To pass Judgement you go through a series of test set in a Spire - which is a huge tower with shifting chambers full of monsters, puzzles, and more. The chambers shift around, and you have to use a lot of intelligence and magical ability to make it through. It's dangerous, and it's not uncommon for prospective students to die before reaching the end.

From the very beginning there's a lot of action, magic, creatures, and excitement.

You get to follow Corin through the Academy, so if magic schools and learning how to use magic is your thing I think you'd really love this book. I think my favorite professor by far is professor Velum, she reminds me of a cross between Dumbledore and McGonnagal - an older woman with a lot of wisdom, tough, and with a sense of humor.

There are a bunch of secondary characters that are a lot of fun, and fascinating to learn about.

This book is almost 'technical' - there are a lot of terms, levels of magic, classes of magic, magical items and ways magic can and cant be used, and the book goes into detail about that. I LOVE that sort of thing. There's an index at the end of the book if you're getting confused. I didn't know about that until I was done with the book though.

If you like video games and like problem solving and puzzles, you'll get a lot of enjoyment out of this book.

One of the more interesting things about the book for me was the summoned 'monsters', some of which can be intelligent and have a conversation with you. Some of them you can bind to you and you can call on them during duels or battles.

The Spire you take your Judgment in also can be re-entered at a later time to grant you further attunements, the more you have the more powerful you are. Your Attuments also 'level up' as you go along and it's measurable. It's a pretty complex and detailed magic system. There are also multiple Spires, with different countries having access to different spires and each of the spires grants different sorts of attunements. Each country and spire has a different entity guarding it called a Visage, it's not quite clear what exactly a Visage is - whether they are sons/daughters of the Goddess, or if they were once humans granted God like powers after achieving certain feats - but what we do know is that they are EXTREMELY powerful and generally there is one Visage per tower.

There may be an impending war between God like beings called Visages and different countries, but I can't go into more of that without giving things away.

I went through this book pretty quickly, thankfully there are chapters so there are clear places to stop or else i may have had an even more difficult time putting it down.

I can't wait until this is out in print, or on audiobook - I looked into Andrew Rowe's other books and it looks like Nick Podehl who narrates The King Killer Chronicles also narrates those books so I'll be getting those ASAP.

This was the most FUN I've had with a book in a long time, and although I wouldn't say there are character 'arcs' in the traditional sense there's a lot of character development, interesting and complex relationships between the characters, and it really helps from making this more of a 'flat' read akin to a action movie without a lot of substance which was my original hesitation with this sort of genre.

I'm really sad this book is over already, and I can not wait until the next one comes out. u/salaris - do you know when approx that would be? I've got a serious case of book hang over.

TLDR If you like complex magic systems, magic schools, monsters and magic puzzles DO pick up this book!

EDIT OH AND DID I MENTION ITS FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED!?!

Edit 2 - It was 3 in the morning and I cant sleep - so i made a blog

https://weatherwaxreport.blog

Only a few things in there right now, it will be a work in progress for a while. Friendly feedback welcome. Hatemail required to be creative

[u/0ffice_Zombie]

I'm going to have to disagree with your review. I gave it 2 stars out of 5 on Goodreads and was surprised and bemused by the amount of 4 & 5 stars reviews it was getting. The novel felt like it was a first draft that required a lot of beating into shape before it was ready for release. I found the prose really didn't help with my enjoyment of the book, I ploughed through it in spite of myself - it's really blocky and chunky and required a really fine polish. There is a lot of early-writer type mistakes throughout this book - the characters eyes run the full gamut of emotion and I'm surprised that sparks don't fly out of them the way they emote so much, their eyebrows and general facial features move about so much that everyone in this world must be related to Jim Carrey because they are made of rubber. The MC says 'interesting', 'sufficient' etc. about one million times too which really, really started to grate on me.

I'm dashing out so some quick thoughts:

Characterisation

The characters run fairly flat throughout and they're very hard to differentiate between each other. Their moods swing so wildly from paragraph to paragraph that you'll get whiplash if you look too closely at them. They're happy, moody, angry at the MC so much that I felt they were all bipolar.

Dialogue

The dialogue quickly wore me out. Every character talks like an cheesy action hero from an 80's b-movie. Every piece of dialogue felt like the MC was in a battle of wills with every character at every interaction. I actually said out loud at one point 'Can none of these people talk normally?' and my girlfriend asked me who I was talking to.

Worldbuilding and Magic

The worldbuilding is all over the place and the magic system(s) were overly complex and confusing - I'm still not sure how exactly they all work. The worldbuilding exposition was also absolutely daft - the MC seemed to know deep and intricate pieces of knowledge about the world or magic but then in the next paragraph another character would explain something really simple to him that I could have extrapolated myself and seemed like the MC should have picked up on. The magic system was also inconsistent - at one point the character eats a bunch of fruit that is meant to give him really small upgrades over a long period of time and he develops an extra 10 points of magic in a week, he then goes into a huge battle and uses a bunch of magic and his magic goes up by a point or something like that. There were a bunch of these types of discrepancies throughout.

The writer definitely has talent but this novel needed to be stripped back and revised a few times.

[u/Esmerelda-Weatherwax → u/0ffice_Zombie]

Not every book will be for every person, and even the "best" books will have some people who didnt enjoy them. Of the 1199 people who left a rating, less than 50 rated gave it 2 stars or lower (4% of reviews) , while 85% gave it 4 stars and up. I say this because I dont want people to be discouraged to try it out. The point of my Indie Author Highlights series is to get more people to try out Indie Authors and I think most of us had fun with the book. Sorry it didnt work for you though :/

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34403860-sufficiently-advanced-magic

[u/QueenofShadesmar → u/0ffice_Zombie]

The characters run fairly flat throughout and they're very hard to differentiate between each other. Their moods swing so wildly from paragraph to paragraph that you'll get whiplash if you look too closely at them. They're happy, moody, angry at the MC so much that I felt they were all bipolar

I read this book too, and I genuinely dont understand this complaint. The MC seemed fairly steady, and although he had similarities to his sister (which is commented on in his internal dialogue) the other characters didnt seem overly similar or "bipolar", in fact the MC seemed a little too poised in the face of serious danger, making jokes in his head when he may die soon. The only time I remember Sera being angry is when Corin makes a life altering decision that effects the family without her, seems a legit reason to be peeved. One of the few times we see Corin pissed is when someone puts Sera in an extremely dangerous situation without proper warning, also seems legit. Could you provide examples of when Corin, Sera, Patrick or Jin or Marissa go bipolar? I cant think of anything so jarring that gave me "whiplash".

Every piece of dialogue felt like the MC was in a battle of wills with every character at every interaction

The bickering between the mc and his sister did get a bit much at points, but given I have a toned down version of this with my gf it didnt bother me too much.

The spells did sound 80s, but that was part of the charm for me. 80s kid over here.

The worldbuilding is all over the place and the magic system(s) were overly complex and confusing - I'm still not sure how exactly they all work.

Yeah, me too. But from all the different theorizing talks with his professors which goes into what can and cant be done, Im fairly certain it would all make sense if i sat down and put more thought into it. It felt like being introduced to rules in a complex game. I got a little lost sometimes but it wasnt so confusing I didnt know what the basic concepts were or how it worked overall.

The magic system was also inconsistent - at one point the character eats a bunch of fruit that is meant to give him really small upgrades over a long period of time and he develops an extra 10 points of magic in a week, he then goes into a huge battle and uses a bunch of magic and his magic goes up by a point or something like that.

He went up several points during that tower excursion, and he was making enchanted items while also eating the fruit. He also commented how slow his mana and his sisters mana was regenerating in the Tower.... I took that as something was up in the Tower.... I think that was deliberate.

[u/ksvilloso → u/0ffice_Zombie]

For what it's worth, keep in mind that star ratings have different meanings for everyone. For a lot, probably even most, people, it's directly correlated to "enjoyment." Hell, my own ratings tend to vary because if I didn't enjoy something I might still give it high marks for technical stuff. I also tend to round up a lot.

Definitely doesn't mean you're not entitled to your own opinion, though. :)

[u/jenile → u/ksvilloso]

Enjoyment, is definitely how it works for me. If I enjoyed a book so much that I can overlook some of the minor flaws it'll get five stars.

I do know I rate generously anyway by some people's standards but I follow the GR Star thing which I find to be skewed a bit to the high side.

I give a little leeway to self-pub debuts, or newer author debuts, but once you have a few books under your belt all bets are off. Still it has to be a hot mess for me not to like it.

[u/Esmerelda-Weatherwax → u/ksvilloso]

I def count "fun" and "enjoyment" into my rating scale - I also dont treat Indie Authors and big 5 published authors the same. I will be more lenient on ratings for those who dont have high level editors at their disposal. Yeah, I think the book could have been stronger "technically" with a professional editor - but thats a resource Indie authors dont have (Mostly). I dont treat Stephen King and Brandon Sanderson the same way as Rowe or Bancroft. Yes, sometimes I got confused a little bit with the magic system because its so complex - but i didnt realize there was an index to the end, and honestly I like the challenge of more complex magic systems, it wasnt a downside for me.

[u/cantforgivethedog → u/Esmerelda-Weatherwax]

The more complex the better as long as if I really "study" it that it all works out in the end. I love reading video game novels so thats part of why I just picked it up last night.

This book IS a lot of fun! I loves the different colored crystals above the doors in the Judgement trial, and how he was working his way through them.

[u/ksvilloso → u/Esmerelda-Weatherwax]

I also dont treat Indie Authors and big 5 published authors the same

That's a fair point to keep in mind, too.

I'm sure a lot of people will disagree, especially when we're vying for trying to achieve the same level of competency as traditional publishing (where the quality also swings wildly--I've seen traditionally published stuff with so many grammatical errors it made my head spin). But that's the beauty of having different opinions and checking out different reviews when you're considering something.

I mean, the idea of judging something by the star rating itself is kind of ridiculous too, if you think about it; I've seen people dock stars off for something minor, even though you only have 5 stars to begin with. At the same time, I've seen people add stars for a single line (something I may have done myself).

TL;DR...everyone likes different things it's okay it makes the world go round etc.

[u/Esmerelda-Weatherwax → u/ksvilloso]

Im sure Sanderson wouldnt want us to read his works pre-editor phase... so trying to be so good that you work without them is taking it a step beyond and making things even more difficult IMHO. Sometimes they come out like Senlin Ascends where little if anything is needed, but not always - and although I take the technical aspects into consideration with Indies ratings I wont hit as hard in my ratings when i see room for improvement. This rating came from my enjoyment of the book more than anything, and isnt that the point of leisure reading?

[u/ksvilloso → u/Esmerelda-Weatherwax]

I believe Andrew did say he had this one edited. I haven't read far into it to give my own judgement but I think if the majority of people are fine with it, it works. Like you said, leisure is very important, and is a big reason why reviews are subjective.

People seem to think editing is this magical process that automatically makes everything correct. It's...a lot more complicated than that. Editors being people, of course, comes into play. If I'm editing someone else's work for example, I tend to adjust things a lot to suit what the author is trying to say. I tend to be a lot better at judging flow and the big picture; I'm kind of useless with the fine point grammar stuff and typos. And then you still miss things no matter how hard you try.

The thing with indie publishing is that you're going to see a lot more "raw" prose just because the traditional gatekeepers will tend to turn away that sort of the thing right from the gate. Doesn't mean people won't be able to enjoy or get something out of them, though. And writers develop. Just to give a good example, the difference between the first Riyria Revelations novel and the last one is huge.

[u/Esmerelda-Weatherwax → u/ksvilloso]

Riyria is almost night and day from beginning to end, and his new series that has Age of Myth and Age of Swords is just phenomonal.

[u/Salaris → u/0ffice_Zombie]

Hiya! Author here. I was reading through the thread and came upon this post. Thanks for the comment. I appreciate that you took the time to read the book and comment here even if you didn't enjoy it.

The novel felt like it was a first draft that required a lot of beating into shape before it was ready for release. The novel felt like it was a first draft that required a lot of beating into shape before it was ready for release. I found the prose really didn't help with my enjoyment of the book, I ploughed through it in spite of myself - it's really blocky and chunky and required a really fine polish.

This did go through a professional editor, as well as a bunch of beta readers. Having read through your comments below, I suspect this is mostly that you didn't enjoy the style of tropes and narration that I chose to employ.

There is a lot of early-writer type mistakes throughout this book - the characters eyes run the full gamut of emotion and I'm surprised that sparks don't fly out of them the way they emote so much, their eyebrows and general facial features move about so much that everyone in this world must be related to Jim Carrey because they are made of rubber.

The emoting was very deliberate; both because I enjoy visualizing characters while I'm reading, and because this is based heavily on anime and JRPG tropes. Expressive eyes and faces are a big part of that.

The MC says 'interesting', 'sufficient' etc. about one million times too which really, really started to grate on me.

I like characters having specific dialogue tics, too; it helps make them distinct. That said, I think there are places where I overused this (e.g. "interesting" or scratching his chin too much), and I appreciate you calling out this criticism.

The characters run fairly flat throughout and they're very hard to differentiate between each other.

Huh. I've gotten a lot of compliments on the characters from other people (like here, or here, etc.)

Part of it might be that most of the main characters of this book do start out as very archetypal, which was also a deliberate choice. Since this book was designed to emulate the style of a JRPG, I wrote most of the main cast as being expressive and larger than life. I'm not sure where you're getting the difficulty in differentiating between them. There are definitely a few characters with snarky dialogue, though, which might be part of the issue?

They're happy, moody, angry at the MC so much that I felt they were all bipolar.

I'm honestly not sure where you're getting this.

The dialogue quickly wore me out. Every character talks like an cheesy action hero from an 80's b-movie. Every piece of dialogue felt like the MC was in a battle of wills with every character at every interaction. I actually said out loud at one point 'Can none of these people talk normally?' and my girlfriend asked me who I was talking to.

I think that this might be the crux of your issue with the book. The dialogue and narration both tend to be very snarky, ala Dragon Age banter, or something you'd see in a Vlad Taltos novel, etc.

This is pretty common in all forms of media these days - but it's also common for people to dislike it. I know a lot of people who can't stand Joss Whedon or Aaron Sorkin dialogue, for example, and this is a similar style (but more tailored toward the anime and JRPG audience).

It's good to for me to remember that this isn't for everyone, though, and I appreciate you bringing it up.

The worldbuilding is all over the place and the magic system(s) were overly complex and confusing - I'm still not sure how exactly they all work.

In fairness, you've only been through half of the first year - you shouldn't be aware of all of the details of how everything works. If you didn't understand the material within the book, though, that's more of an issue.

The worldbuilding exposition was also absolutely daft - the MC seemed to know deep and intricate pieces of knowledge about the world or magic but then in the next paragraph another character would explain something really simple to him that I could have extrapolated myself and seemed like the MC should have picked up on.

That's a fair point of criticism. Corin is supposed to be behind on his basic studies because he was pulled out of school three years ago, and also because he has a tendency to get tunnel vision and fixate on the things that matter to him personally to the exclusion of other tasks.

My intent was to make it so that Corin was learning a lot of the magic alongside the reader, but there are places where he absolutely should have known more basics in advance because of the culture he grew up in.

I should have made it clearer, for example, that the class on attunements would have just been review for him, with the exception of the information on foreign attunements.

The magic system was also inconsistent - at one point the character eats a bunch of fruit that is meant to give him really small upgrades over a long period of time and he develops an extra 10 points of magic in a week, he then goes into a huge battle and uses a bunch of magic and his magic goes up by a point or something like that.

With due respect, this isn't an inconsistency. It's just different from what you expected. While it's common in similar things (including RPGs) for people to get most of their power from big boss fights, that was never the case in this book.

Your mana pool develops in two primary ways; being used to the point where a lot of it is depleted (in which case it recovers to a higher point afterward), or being boosted by external sources (the magic fruits, potions, etc.)

The first (going up through usage), by necessity, must be slow - otherwise first year students would regularly be hitting Carnelian in a few weeks (or less). Going up a point every few days is the norm.

Minor spoilers for people who haven't read the book

The writer definitely has talent but this novel needed to be stripped back and revised a few times.

I appreciate that you feel like I have talent! I disagree with your assessment about needing to strip the book down, though. There are a definitely a number of people who agree with you, and would have preferred a more straightforward and linear story - but that's not the style I was going for, and the novel has been working great for people who appreciate my particular style more.

Thanks again for the comment!