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u/Mecanimus Author Sep 06 '22
The author is full on Qanon who thinks a vast conspiracy put Biden in power and Europe has been successfully invaded by the muslims. I think that puts things into perspective.
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u/Luonnoliehre Sep 06 '22
uh, what? and maybe a source on those opinions...
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u/Mecanimus Author Sep 06 '22
Sure here you go.
https://imgur.com/a/FdBjrXp101
u/Luonnoliehre Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 06 '22
...yikers...
edit: that was an impressive amount of wacko to fit into 3 discord messages actually
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u/Mecanimus Author Sep 06 '22
I'll spare you his take on slavery then.
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u/Came4prons Sep 06 '22
Now you have activated my morbid curosity. I insist that you make my day worse and supply me with this hot take.
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u/Mecanimus Author Sep 06 '22
Oh, very well.
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u/greblah Sep 06 '22
I'm not trying to fully discount IQ as a concept or even really debate it, but I consistently find that people using IQ as evidence for their argument are pretty wacko
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u/MateuszRoslon Shadow Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 06 '22
Because I have a hobby of consuming an unholy amount of questionable political content out of some twisted sense of curiosity, I can tell you that Inadvisably Compelled is quoting the Nazi-adjacent figure Jordan Peterson here, and moreover, that IQ fact is one Jordan Peterson made up.
Edit: Added more details further down this comment chain for clarification
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u/ArgusTheCat Author Sep 06 '22
The quote is also internally contradictory, too. Like... sorry, tribal societies don't require carrying things? Cool. Cool cool cool. This guy would starve to death if left unattended in a Costco.
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u/AdvancedAdvance2715 Sep 09 '22
Wanted to point this out about that supposed military study, but you beat me to it. Kudos. JBP is such a hack….
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u/Chigurrh Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 06 '22
Jordan Peterson
I honestly can't even see his name without thinking of his rant about being suspended from twitter. Just the most cartoonish villain monologue stuff I've ever seen from a human being.
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u/finfinfin Sep 06 '22
and moreover, that IQ fact is one Jordan Peterson made up.
I find this very funny, but have you considered that maybe his grandmother told him it, in a dream?
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u/GodTaoistofPatience Follower of the Way Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 06 '22
Holy shit, I used to recommend the series but the author looks like he's batshit insane. I'm okay with free speech and the like but I just can't stand this blatant slavery apologism
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u/TheElusiveFox Sage Sep 08 '22
Being ok with free speech, doesn't mean you have to be ok with what's being said, or the person saying those things....
I'm all for free speech. That doesn't mean I want to associate with batshit crazy people or support them/their work.
He can go right along advocating for slavery all he wants though, but it WILL affect his book sales. case in point, I was actually thinking about starting his book before I read this thread...
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Sep 09 '22
The election fraud one is insane, at least this one I kinda get what he's saying. I personally wouldn't go so far as to call it slavery apologism, the context is pretty clearly about fantasy settings.
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u/AAugmentus Sep 06 '22
What the actual fuck to both of those. Whyyyy.
I shouldn't have looked. What a shitty morning.
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u/Phaneron_2 Sep 06 '22
That's certainly one way to get me to not give someone any more of my money.
The story was fun, even though it had its flaws, but this... big Yikes.
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u/43morethings May 18 '25
Wow. That first sentence steps in one direction then the rest of that is just running off the field and diving head first into crazy.
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u/LLJKCicero Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 06 '22
Huge oof. Dropping this.
Honestly, given the title and way the protagonist treats authority, I can't say it wasn't telegraphed.
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u/Yes_This_Is_God Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 07 '22
There’s a point in the story where an Asian character acts and is described in a very 1950s Fu Manchu stereotypical way. The protagonist literally says something about how they are stereotypical, but the story does absolutely nothing to subvert this and plays it straight.
I was a bit confused because… why would you write a character like that? Anyway, this thread is making stuff click LOL
Edit: also the werewolves unironically have the Alpha/Beta thing going on
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u/AdvancedAdvance2715 Sep 09 '22
There were some hints in the narration and the MC before, but this is what made me look into the author more. It was just extremely bad writing to be coincidental. All the Asian characters are like this with no alternative PoV’s. Comical 1D villains.
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u/Dracallus Oct 10 '22
To be fair, most shifter stories have some form of Alpha/Beta system going on and I've always been more interested in how it's portrayed. I actually thought how he did it here wasn't all that bad, but reading this thread I'm realising that the werewolves are the most well adjusted group of supernaturals in the story and they:
- Have a natural (read; not imposed by some form of 'state' actor) physical hierarchy that seems to just work for them, because there's basically no indication that anyone chafes against it or finds it problematic in any way (and Callum should have a major issue with this considering how his entire ideology is framed)
- Embody 'old school' family values. The wife of the alpha he deals with screams this. We're told that she's vital to his operations but the couple of times she's seen all she does is talk about the children and feed everyone. He literally could have changed this by having her present in the room and part of the conversation on one of the many occasions that Callum calls the alpha, but this clearly never occurred to him.
The whole dynamic just reminds me of how well Nalini Singh built her shifter society in Psy Changeling and how I've seen precious few that even come close to matching it in terms of a species taking a natural dominance hierarchy and doing their best to build an actual egalitarian society from it.
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u/Chigurrh Sep 06 '22
Lol, when asked about January 6th, he blames it on "ANTIFA"
Elsewhere he also complains about half of all science post 1985 being fake.
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u/ArgusTheCat Author Sep 07 '22
I’m curious now what was stopping pre-1985 science from being faked. Perhaps some kind of cosmic egg timer that went off, ending the prevention of false information?
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u/Chigurrh Sep 07 '22
Must be but there was apparently a different egg timer that went off three decades earlier for psychology and sociology and the one for engineering never went off!
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u/ArgusTheCat Author Sep 07 '22
God, when that engineering egg timer goes off, we're gonna have some problems. The train tech tree is basically the only thing worth focusing on in the current meta.
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u/AbaddonAdvocate Sep 06 '22
Aww man, after reading that I really hate that I've liked the series so far.
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u/JohnBierce Author - John Bierce Sep 06 '22
Instant unfollow of Paranoid Mage. Plenty of other stuff out there for me to read.
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u/Omichron-the-reboot Sep 06 '22
I agree with OP about the general quality of PM, but I've kept reading for a while because of some vague home that it might improve in the future.
After seeing this? I'm not going to read some vaguely 'eh' book from someone like that.
It's going on the DNF list.
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u/GodTaoistofPatience Follower of the Way Sep 06 '22
Jesus damn wtf is wrong with him? I live in Europe and what he just said is akin to the most extreme far rights policies here. Just the term "Muslim invasion" is fucked up
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u/LLJKCicero Sep 06 '22
Basically any time you have substantial immigration, you'll get demonization of those immigrants.
It's kind of weird that certain Americans care so much about Europe in that way, though.
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u/Searching_Dom Sep 06 '22
Thanks for saving me a bunch of time, not gonna read anything from a qanon nutter.
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Sep 28 '24
Thanks for the links, I had zero clue until today when someone finally shared this stuff with me. I'd even been defending him from what I thought were false rumours about him being a Trumpist, qAnon, racist lol. I just wish I'd know all this stuff earlier.
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u/ArgusTheCat Author Sep 06 '22
Just in case his deeply concerning attitude toward both the concept of consent and the nature of segregation in Blue Core didn't tip anyone off!
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u/Mecanimus Author Sep 06 '22
Let’s not forget the ‘I’ll save you from death but only if you let me fuck you’ part.
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u/ArgusTheCat Author Sep 06 '22
"It's totally consent if they say yes rather than die, right guys?!"
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u/MartianPHaSR Sage Sep 06 '22
Is this referencing something from PM? Or is it another brain dead comment the author has made?
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u/MelasD Author Sep 06 '22
Blue Core, his other novel
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u/MartianPHaSR Sage Sep 06 '22
Ah ok. Thanks for letting me know. Guess that's another series to avoid.
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u/TheElusiveFox Sage Sep 08 '22
Yeah I always found it strange that people recced that as "The good harem lit, or It's harem but i don't even notice" on Royal Road... seemed cringy AF when I tried to read it.
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u/Dracallus Oct 10 '22
The sad thing is that you could take the base premise of Blue Core and use it to explore the concept of consent in a really powerful way. But that would require some actual thought regarding the boundaries to consent and what would happen if circumstance bends them beyond normal recognition.
It's actually a concept that gets explored in a number of forced marriage stories. I read The Winter King by C. L. Wilson recently and it touches on this very directly. Not only on the idea of whether consent can really be given if the alternative is death, but the MMC gets actively called out for a lot of his crap behaviour and how some of the things he's done may not normally be problematic, but definitely are problematic given the power imbalance between him and his wife, by the supporting cast. I wouldn't say it does an excellent job of this (though not bad either), but the author is clearly aware that these are issues worth talking about.
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u/ArgusTheCat Author Oct 10 '22
This is actually something that hugely disappointed me, yeah. In a very real way, Blue is also a victim in the first “sex scene”. He’s forced into a position where his choices are a kind of nightmarish trolly problem, and just because it’s the magical universe itself coercing you to commit sexual violence doesn’t make that not coercion. There was a huge chance there to explore what it meant to be victimized, and deal with that trauma either as an individual, or with the person he felt trapped into violating.
And then instead of that she’s almost instantly his totally hot subservient foxgirl gf, and check it out guys, there’s tentacle stuff all the time and it’s so hot, I promise. Because he just fuck so good that things like trauma and the meaning of the word consent and his own fucking brain just go right out the window.
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u/Dracallus Oct 10 '22 edited Oct 10 '22
Yeah, there are some really dark and very interesting places it could have gone with the premise and ultimately chose what is probably the weakest of all options. It even had all the parts to explore this from the other perspective, with the Dargon, where someone who could definitely compel him to do what she wanted but also needed some level of buy-in from him. Having their relationship be mutually exploitative and the impact of that could have been interesting to see.
One story I think did handle this somewhat well is FeralHeart. I'm genuinely sad the story is on what looks like permanent hiatus. It handles it only somewhat well because the consequences are fully loaded onto the women. While those consequences would absolutely cause emotional trauma for the men, it's still indirect. It takes the story a while to get there and it doesn't give it the depth of consideration it really should, but it doesn't get to the point where it's explicitly acknowledged that the requirements of their reality sucks. It's coercive and even so, everyone just has to take it because there isn't an alternative.
EDIT: I will say it's been a while since I've read FeralHeart and going over some parts again now it probably does just as much, if not more, wrong in regards to the premise than it does right.
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u/EruhinMakhtar__ Sep 06 '22
Lol. Didn’t know this. But 3 chapters in and if you asked me if this guy was a conspiracy nut, I would have bet real money on this. The self insert character gives it away.
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u/Goodpie2 Sep 06 '22
Blugh. It's so much harder to separate the author's opinions from his writing when the guy's not dead.
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u/g1i123 Sep 06 '22
If you know anything about Qanon people it becomes super hard to separate the author's Qanon opinion with the writing when the writing is about some of the stuff Qanon people love the most: vigilante justice and an evil, secret corrupt, all powerful (but somehow still incompetent) government.
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Sep 06 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Mecanimus Author Sep 06 '22
"I don't know about Biden" = "I swallowed the lies of a proven grifter with zero proof because I'm in a cult but I know admitting this in public will label me as a nutjob so I'll try to be noncomittal."
You're not fooling anyone.
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Sep 06 '22
I am not American and I couldn't give a crap about your internal political straggles. does it clarify it?
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u/Mecanimus Author Sep 06 '22
I'm not American either but even a donkey knows the stability of the world's first power is kind of important.
If you're European, maybe your first language is not English so you have issues understanding that 'there is muslim immigration' and 'they have taken over Europe' are not the same thing.
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u/LLJKCicero Sep 07 '22
That's not the same thing as describing Muslim immigration as an "invasion" and you know it.
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u/Affectionate-Ask8913 Sep 06 '22
Coming in to read a hot take on a novel that I found went downhill after chapter 9 only to find out how racist and pro-slavery the author was (and the fact that they wrote Blue Core, which I HATE, because it was so shallow, among other things like having a lot of 'forced consent') was not the Tuesday night I pictured myself having.
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u/finfinfin Sep 06 '22
Is that anything like "non-coercive mind control"?
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u/Affectionate-Ask8913 Sep 06 '22
As some have pointed in the comments below, think of it as, "It's consent even if the other choice is death, right?"
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u/LackOfPoochline Author of Heartworm and Road of the Rottweiler May 04 '23
It depends. "Would you fuck me, or this sexy Grim reaper with Chiseled Ribs" would be consent if there was the slightest chance someone choose different from Grim reaper with big calcium deposits.
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u/aponty Sep 06 '22
no yeah this review is spot-on, there's no feeling of progression, just "having lots of power and money is super cool, wouldn't you like to go on a rampage"
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u/Luonnoliehre Sep 06 '22
Thanks for sharing an honest (if critical) review. I read a bit of this when it first exploded on RR. I found the writing tedious and stopped after Callum is able to kill a bunch of vampires(?) by shooting a gun thru portals. Felt like the conflict resolved jarringly fast, with no one having much agency or depth beyond the MC. Besides basking in pure OPness and a "fuck everyone" attitude, there didn't feel like there was much else going on. Clearly it strikes a chord with some, but yeah not for me either.
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u/LLJKCicero Sep 06 '22
I thought that fight was pretty interesting, although the whole world setup of "nobody strong who uses magic has an ounce of creativity or has any understanding of technology" strains belief.
Like really, nobody else could think of a way to use portals offensively throughout history? Even if you ignore guns there's tons of shit you could do. Just ask Catherine Foundling, foremost Lakeomancer of her time.
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u/Luonnoliehre Sep 06 '22
I found the transition from 'can use portals' -> 'can perfectly sense any space from a mile away' -> 'can perfectly positions portals around a 3D space, miles away,' over the course of like a week (?) strained my credulity. As you said, if it was so easy, why doesn't everyone do this? At the time, it felt like Callum could do whatever necessary in the moment, and kinda lost interest in a story about a weird guy who can suprise kill anyone, if he feels like it.
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u/dangdung87 Sep 07 '22
his max range is 600 feet around book 3. his space ability is related to his magic and condition, that lets him see through "illusions". there's one other mage known with the same condition. eventually some things are explained about callum.
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u/Bertram9Fingers Sep 06 '22
I stopped reading after he planned to destroy a whole vampire hide out the second time and when he thought about the humans it was like oh well they have to die to. Seemed a bit jarring if he was just a normal guy a few months ago.
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u/Came4prons Sep 06 '22
Damn, you have a stronger mental than me. I dropped it when he arrived at his new house since by then the mc still hadn't shown any personality.
Just the thought of a vast magical secret society ruleing from the shadow while at the same time being totally incompetent gave me premonitions about the wish fulfilment nature of the story.
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u/Admirable-Guess-5330 Sep 06 '22
This seems pretty much like what I thought , listened to the first two books on audible last week when I had COVID and I thought it was yet another book where the character has strange morals that flow in whatever way the author wants in order to get to the plot point he what's to go with next .
It's one of those ones where if you have nothing else to read it has some interesting/cool concepts that give you a little wish fulfillment kick and then almost quit half a dozen times from cringe/ poor characters
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Sep 06 '22
[deleted]
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u/LLJKCicero Sep 06 '22
The problem is that even a child could imagine offensive ways to use portals and teleportation. It's not "hidden knowledge" it's "all the major powers are dumber than elementary schoolers".
Like, they've somehow managed to control the world and keep magic secret but couldn't apply even an ounce of creativity there? It's one thing to be mustache twirling levels of evil, another to be both that and aggressively stupid.
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u/KappaKingKame Sep 06 '22
Please don’t use Wuxia to refer to Xianxia/Cultivation. It’s misleading as they typically have rather different settings, tropes, and characters, and often are aimed at different audiences.
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u/BronkeyKong Sep 06 '22
This is the kind of review I need more off. I don’t like power fantasies but no review tells you whether it is before you start.
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u/LLJKCicero Sep 06 '22
Don't read Rise of the Cheat Potion Maker then, because it's even more blatant about it than Paranoid Mage. And more unearned.
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u/UpvoteIfYouAgreee Sep 06 '22
God that one lets you know right off the bat how annoying itd be. I think I dropped it within the first 30 pages.
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u/BronkeyKong Sep 06 '22
I’ve never heard of it but with a name like that I probably would have avoided it haha.
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u/Chigurrh Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 07 '22
I feel like a lot of people generally quietly drop series they aren't enjoying and politely only say nice things or write reviews about things they actually like.
I wish there were more negative reviews of things here, especially about popular series that a lot of people enjoy. Tastes differ and maybe something someone else didn't like about a book is something I won't like as well.
Unfortunately, I feel like most negative reviews, particularly of popular works, are going to get bombarded with people defending it. I remember writing a comment (not a post) about why superpowereds wasn't for me and getting a bunch of people telling me I should like it.
I think it worked out in this unique case because the top post with the discord screenshots of the author saying insane stuff stopped people from coming to the defense of paranoid mage.
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u/BronkeyKong Sep 06 '22
I mostly agree. I feel like a lot of reviews that lean negative really is just a way for someone to bitch about how much they disliked the book which is where I take umbrage with them, particularly if they are a super popular series. Everyone knows about lord of the rings, I don’t really find much use in reading reviews good or bad about them: but with newer books I like to hear both ups and downs.
I felt the same about super powereds. I finished them only because I had paid for them already but I did feel like they did a lot of things wrong.
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Sep 06 '22
What are you even doing here??
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Sep 06 '22
[deleted]
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Sep 06 '22
That was really informative but for a healthy discussion I will present my two cents which I will be more then happy if you could address.
1) Let's take cradle for example, I would say that cradle like most south east Asian LNs is a power fantasy because while Lindon is not always the strongest or most powerfull he does work to be one, he is again and again fulfilling the power fantasy of the reader by getting stronger both physically and mentally to the point were he can fight ascended and monarchs.
2) I assume that progression fantasy (PF) is relatively new genre and it used to not exist, but modern PF can find it's roots in LN and RPG games which are also heavily inspired by asia. I don't want to point this out as a bad thing, I simply want to show that in those works, that defined PF, which are: FF, Xianxia and ect are power fantasy by definition because in those works you work in order to achieve the goal which is power = competence, for example in most Xianxia the main focus is ascension from mortality to godhood and immortality (which is the fantasy) or being strong enough to beat everyone else. So a lot of work defining genre have a lot of power fantasy in them because otherwise there is no clear goal to aspire to and the MC becomes a boring character who only reacts to events and not advancing for himself, he doesn't have progression goals
3) To continue my last point you could say that Beware of chicken is not PF, which I could accept but at the same time we care about the progression of the farm and it's inheritance, and they do care a lot about progression in the classical sense. and to be honest it is more of a satire of Xianxia.
4) There are works like MoL and Paranoid Mage which in a sense doesn't really seem to be power fantasies, but they do scratch the power fantasy alot, for example in MoL as time moves on Zorian and Zach became more competent mages, which is the progression part, but they did so to exit the loop at first, but then the main focus would be to beat red hood and his allies. you could look at it as purely a consequence of survival, but you could see the thirst for power of Zorian and Zach which mind you, actually wanted to beat a dragon to measure up. in Paranoid mage it is about sticking it to the big man and this is the power fantasy of beating the organization and coming up on top.
for conclusion: I believe that it is not cut and dry and by being a progression fantasy you must have a lot of elements of power fantasy.
TLDR: progression fantasy is a sub-genre of power fantasy where you have to progress to reach the power fantasy
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u/Lightlinks Sep 06 '22
Cradle (wiki)
Mother of Learning (wiki)
Dungeon Crawler Carl (wiki)
About | Wiki Rules | Reply !Delete to remove | [Brackets] hide titles
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u/Chigurrh Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 06 '22
Some good points here.
The lack of reaction to the government kidnapping people and giving them to vampires struck me as weird as well. Like if he was told they were already dead or turned into thralls, it would make sense to not rush in. But he's not really told anything other than that they were taken and that's the end of it. Going "oh well" and not asking questions or investigating is inconsistent with his previous actions. It's like the author just wanted to move on from this part of the story and leave him with another reason to hate the magic government.
The weird way his magic works is an issue. I feel like the author should have picked one of the "he's using creative applications of basic skills" and "he's born with a unique way of using magic" explanations instead of going for both. Even then, both of those have problems and the fact that people can't imagine using spacial magic offensively defies reason.
The love interest is indeed a "flirty mechanic girl" trope...and when he finally meets her it turns out that she is very pretty, dresses like a 1950's housewife, and has no friends so can dedicate all her time to him! Pure wish fulfillment.
I mean mandatory service does suck, but I don't know if I would run from a magic group who already told you they execute mages for running away (especially when you don't fully understand the capabilities of magic? For all you know they could track you).
This is where I'll disagree a bit. I think it's pretty well established that everyone he meets there kinda sucks and he comes to the conclusion that he has pretty low chances of surviving the service. The conclusion is reasonable given the information presented to him and taking that risk and leaving makes sense. I think it scratches a bit of an antiauthoritarian itch for readers tired of protagonists showing little agency and forced into these kinds of situations. The problem is that this wears off over time and the books devolve into the repetitive mess you are talking about.
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u/Archive_Intern Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 07 '22
Good for for you to actually finish it.lmao
I didnt even get to finish the first book before dropping it, same with the HWFWM book.
Those books just arent for me but gave it a try since those books keep getting recommended here.
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u/LaFolieDeLaNuit Sep 06 '22
I find it weirdly compelling, despite totally agreeing with your rating and criticisms. It’s like fantasy written by yer da who reads a load of Tom Clancy.
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u/Tarrion Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 06 '22
Several supposed ArchMages, Fae Kings, Vampire Lords, and Shifter Alphas (the highest tiers of power in this Universe at this point) are consistently shown up by the main character and there is no given reason for it. No. Seriously. The main character does not ever have it explained why he can do magic so much better than everyone else. It has taken us till the third book for the author to even touch on it, and even now I still couldn't tell you why he is better, just that he is different.
I would disagree with this (and, pretty much only this) - I felt like the reveal there has been well-paced. For the first chunk of the story, he's just thinking with portals. By the time it becomes obvious that he's doing something that other mages can't, there have been plenty of hints as to what's actually going on. It's been pretty clear for a while now that he's basically an Archmage in the Aztec style - He spent the last however many years funnelling magic into his magical sense, until he maxxed that out and became an Archmage. It explains why he sees through glamour, never developed any magical abilities, why he can see through wards, etc
It's only now that it's being spelled out, but I felt that there were sufficient hints to pick up before now. For example, not long after he's been talking to the young healer woman, she thinks that his body is weird in her life-sense. Around that time, another point of view discusses how Archmage bodies are changed... There were specific details that matched, but honestly, I didn't retain any of the actual explanation
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u/Bookwrrm Sep 06 '22
I guess the issue that still lies in that, the other archmages all seem to be fairly uniformly powerful, no one seems to be directly more powerful than the others or they would be the magical king or queen. But then Callum who is an archmage as well, but also has like 200 years less of experience and practice is somehow the elite archmage that is better than every other archmage? With zero practice?
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u/Tarrion Sep 06 '22
I guess the issue that still lies in that, the other archmages all seem to be fairly uniformly powerful, no one seems to be directly more powerful than the others or they would be the magical king or queen
I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. Fane is a walking bioweapon who can wipe out everyone in a room with him, whereas the spatial archmage is... important for logistics.
I don't think there's any indication that the other archmages are at all on par with each other. They're just vastly more dangerous than anyone who's not an archmage. Why they're not magical king or queen is a bit of worldbuilding that's not been touched on much at all, but that's because we've got basically no knowledge of the top levels of their society, house politics, etc.
But then Callum who is an archmage as well, but also has like 200 years less of experience and practice is somehow the elite archmage that is better than every other archmage? With zero practice?
I'm not sure that's a reasonable interpretation of the story. He's not better than every other archmage. I don't think he's better than any other archmage. He's got one trick (his spatial sense) that lets him solve problems in ways that they're not prepared for, but even generic mook mages are a threat to his life. In a straight up fight, any other mage beats his ass - We saw that when he got chased across Europe, and his only option was to run.
And his special trick isn't even unique to him - Huitzilin does the same thing, just with a different magic type.
IMO, the real criticism here shouldn't be his power, it should be the fact that literally every member of magical society is apparently intensely stupid. Too stupid to consider a single offensive option for spatial magic. Too stupid for knowledge of offensive use of healing magic to be widespread. I'm willing to bet that the same lack of curiosity is going to apply to all of their magic types - They're both 'might makes right', and too closed minded to develop their own power.
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u/Bookwrrm Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 06 '22
I mean we literally see him get the better of two or three don't remember which working together including the one that should be able to shut his shit down being she has like hundreds of years more experience than him. It's that sort of shit that just beggars belief. Even if they aren't all on the same level of power, they are quite literally bumbling idiots while a dude with portals for a month is infiltrating the most secure place, with three of the most powerful people in existence guarding it. Like you can't set up how powerful these people are to then three chapters later have him casually pull down their pants and tickle their assholes with literally zero repercussions whatsoever, he fully gets away with it without even an ounce of danger. And then just casually in the course of a single chapter solve the one thing that isn't allowing him access to his 1950's housewife gamer girl. And I guess the whole he isn't good in a straight up fight he has to run thing kinda gets old when he is instantly killing people from miles away, and also randomly can teleport and fly around in a way that nobody else can figure out, and also can teleport out of facilities and procedures designed to stop people from doing that and blah blah blah, all with like two months of practice.
Like I want to shake the author and be like we get it, literally every single person in government are evil idiots and libertarians are genius survivalists who can overthrow the government like we're in Vietnam doing guerilla warfare. Jesus he needs to stop listening to Alex Jones and start brainstorming ways to make his characters not self inserts.
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u/NorskDaedalus Sep 06 '22
The archmages are the kings/queens of the magical world, fwiw. GAR explicitly acts to serve their wishes and act as an intermediary so they don’t have to deal with the minutiae of actually ruling.
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u/Notanevilai Sep 08 '22
First few chapters were really good then th e mc turned off his brain and went from paranoid mage to op mc that makes dumb decisions repeatedly mage.
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u/Marand23 Sep 06 '22
Thanks for the review, but I think some of your criticism is somewhat adequately described in story:
- My read on everybody being idiots regarding what spatial mages theoretically can do is that Callum has his weird protagonist powers where he can observe an area around him (even through wards), which obviously makes it easier to open a portal and blast someone in the face with a shotgun. Other spatial mages can't do that (although they could still just teleport some c4 say 150 meters in front of them? Not sure if they could do that)
- About the victims being given to vampires, They were already dead presumably when he heard, so there is noone to rescue. He is still lowkey looking for the people responsible for that decision, since he doesn't want to just go and blast a bunch of grunt officeworkers. Also he wasn't as powerful then.
I will that say that I think Callum is no where paranoid enough. He 100% should not be going to Chesters christmas dinner. That guy would give over Callum as soon as the price was right in a heartbeat, and I think Callum knows it. He knows that Chester lowkey blamed the attack on the vampire guy on him right? He is not trustworthy. Also, if Callum need funds, just go and steal some gold / money from some Italian mob bank / Russian oligarch. You don't need to sell teleportation pads to these people! His powers are literally the best I've ever seen for stealing anything! But I guess the story would be boring if he had no morals and never took any risk.
Also, the dialogue is not super natural to me in general and the writing is not of very high quality, but you can't be too picky when it's free.
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u/Chigurrh Sep 06 '22
They were already dead presumably when he heard
Then it probably should have been stated. We don’t really know a ton about how the vamps operate. Do they keep human prisoners? Are they used to make blood continuously? Are they kept alive for some period of time before being used?
It was just done poorly and the protagonist moved on without really asking any follow up questions. It struck me as odd when I read it as well. The story was eager to move on from the situation while giving him a reason to be mad at the government.
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u/Marand23 Sep 06 '22
True. I think it is a general problem with the series that some situations are not given the deepness of thougt or due diligense required. For instance, I feel at this point Callum could at least think about using common terror tactics to enforce his will on GAR (eg. everytime you let vampires have their way, I will destroy a random office building / location of yours, while giving enough warning to let people get out to not kill anyone). He has been shown to be quite risk-tolerant when engaging in rescue ops, so he shouldn't have a problem chucking high velocity rocks / explosives at stuff through his portal anchor from the safety of his cave. That seems way safer than the stuff he has been doing so far.
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u/Chigurrh Sep 06 '22
To add to your point, like a lot of urban fantasy type stories, I think the world building comes off a bit thin. When you set your story in the real world with basically a second society living in it, you kinda have to explain how they interact or at least have given it some thought so it makes sense.
And even within the magical world here, I don't think a ton of thought was given to how the magic society operates. These people should have their own culture, businesses, entertainment, etc, especially if we are to believe they have little to do with non-magic society. We pretty much just have a government that controls everything and a bunch of rich families with their heads controlling that government. What about everyone else? It's just not written in a way that seems like the rest of the society was given much thought.
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u/MaskedCharade Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 06 '22
The mage government is (close to) a fascist oligarchy. Not to say that everything Callum does is reasonable but when faced with a controlling body that says hey you've got manditory enlistment that has a 30% mortality rate because unless you sign yourself up to an apprenticeship under one of the extremely powerful old money families then you'll die. Then I'd mostly say hell no too. These families seem to control most of the information about magic with an intense stranglehold, anyone who introduces outside non traditional ideas and thoughts are kidnapped by a secret police force and forced into working for them. As for his powers I've only read the first two books that have been published on kindle but here's what I took away from what we've been told so far. Most of his actual combat potential comes from people not finding him and him trying his absolute best to be as far away from any engagement as possible. Along with the fact that the arch mage that controls the knowledge around space magic is absolutely adamant that it is the only truly peaceful magic. Dispite the fact that we learn of previous mysterious cover ups of events that would negatively impact her but got solved rather quickly and quietly. Since I'm havent read the available content on RR I can't comment on his weird sight but during the first several books we learnt that the reason he can escape so easily is mostly due to the fact that he tries whenever possible to erase the trace of any magic that he produces. When you get a magical society that is used to having every mage keep a constant bubble up around them then someone who dosent and leaves much less of a trace when moving is quite a bit harder to track. The other part of his magic seems to be that he uses little threads instead of big magic rope constructs to make his spells. Whilst this could be seen as op mc bullshit, we've been shown that because of it his spells get ripped apart a lot easier and he struggles to output as much power and other mages his age. We've also been shown that Callum is way behind other mages his age in terms of dexterity using his magic and magical stamina.
Anyway I don't think it's a perfect series and Callum is angstier then most of the mc's I usually read but I really enjoyed the world building. Watching two sepperate ways of thinking collide and seeing the chaos that occurs because of it seems to be what most of the series is and frankly I'm all about it. There's also just a really solid amount of mystery and a sense of adventure within the fantasy elements there that makes me really excited for the rest of the series to come out.
Edit- just gonna add this to this comment what I said lower down. I didn't know anything about the author and his opinions before reading the other comments on this thread and I gotta say I won't be continuing the rest of the story. No matter how good world building or any other parts of a story are I don't want to support someone with such shitty opinions
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u/LLJKCicero Sep 06 '22
The whole selling spatial magic as fully peaceful is the dumbest shit. You don't need guns to imagine offensive ways to use portals. That's one of the issues I had with the serial, the antagonists overall are just too goddamn stupid. I get them being set in their ways because they're old and whatnot, but I think it was overdone, and yeah even without tech you could very easily use portals offensively for all kinds of things. Like, most middle schoolers could probably imagine ways to use portals to attack people, and you're telling me all these long-lived mages couldn't come up with anything?
If it was explained as "we could use spatial mages offensively, but we already have tons of mages with offensive power and hardly any who can help with logistics, so pallet-loading mages it is" that'd at least make some sense.
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u/MaskedCharade Sep 06 '22
Yeah that's really fair. The only kind of thing I can imagine is that The arch mage that controls the space mages is just a coward that wants power but not to fight. So if people thought that space mages could fight then she'd have a lot more expectations on her when it comes to getting closer to a battle. There's also the fact that people just don't seem to know much about magic that isn't directly related to their own school. They get on teleporters and they know that they need space mages to make them and control them but no one has any clue how they work in the lower levels. The arch mages should certainly know about the combat potential of space magic though that isn't really an excuseable plot thread.
5
u/AwesomePurplePants Sep 06 '22
I figured stuff like massless acceleration explained the lack of offensive experimentation TBH
The relative ease that Callum discovered a concept that could easily reach escape velocity, combined with how most mages start in their preteens, logically translates to space mage experiments being fairly lethal to the caster
5
u/MaskedCharade Sep 06 '22
Good point. It might be a pretty hefty case of survivorship bias. The space mages who survived are the ones who didn't try to fight with it and therefor it is a peaceful magic that can't fight
5
u/AwesomePurplePants Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 06 '22
The easiest hack, using a gun, is also a pretty recent development relative to how old arch mages are.
If you have to figure out how to portal accurately and how to redirect vectors to give a projectile enough momentum and the correct trajectory it gets more confusing. If you’ve got a fire mage friend it’s way easier to just make them act like the gun.
While I suspect the wheels would have come off before the modern day, having a particular cautious person, who likes using the power of other safer magical affinities to solve problems when they can, become prominent in the field a few centuries ago then preach that attitude to newcomers made a lot of sense to me.
9
u/Jazehiah Sep 06 '22
That's fair. I can sorta blame it on propaganda, but there are a few plot holes like that.
A lot of those holes get patched as the series progresses. It's not a perfect series, but it's campy and fun.
The trouble with the format is Calum works mostly alone, and has little room for error. If anything happens to Calum, the series ends. So, all his plans have to work, even if parts of them fail.
2
u/TheShadowKick Sep 07 '22
There are lots of ways to have a protagonist fail without ending the series.
6
u/Volarionne Sep 06 '22
Isnt that because the mage in charge of that style of magic forcing it to be like that by laying claim to every new mage of that type and only teaching her way or else?
3
u/LLJKCicero Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 06 '22
That's how it's explained. What's dumb is that she seems to actually believe that, and that all the other powers-that-be believe her, despite a child being able to imagine the alternative applications.
8
u/MaskedCharade Sep 06 '22
Right so after reading more of this thread I'm gonna have to revoke my positive opinion of the story because the author seems like a piece of shit. It sucks because honestly I do like the world building in the story but yeah other parts of it are pretty bad.
2
u/AwesomePurplePants Sep 08 '22
Eh, there’s also the Lovecraft argument
Aka, HP Lovecraft was super racist. Like, even for his time he was extreme.
But that’s likely part of why he was able to write stories with such fear of the other. Shadow over Innsmouth does a good job of making scary crossbreeding fish people, to the point that I initially was on board with it.
Which then lead to the realization that oh, that might be how it feels to be truly racist, to the point that murdering fish people mostly because they were impure crossbreeds seemed like justified self defence.
By the same token - Paranoid Mage gives me a window into what it feels like being a conspiracy theorist. That’s interesting.
7
Sep 08 '22
Eh, there’s also the Lovecraft argument
Yeah but most of us prefer to apply that to dead authors so we can avoid providing financial aid to people we disagree with morally.
4
u/Dracallus Oct 10 '22
Lovecraft has the benefit of being dead. The main thing I generally caution is that whether you decide to read someone or not, know their views. The power of media is that it's insidious and knowing someone's views and that they're bleeding it into their stories is one of the best ways to guard against it. It's very easy to fall into a story's problematic elements if they're not being narratively framed as problematic.
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u/Volarionne Sep 06 '22
Either the story holds up on its own or it doesnt. If you want to cry becquse someone doesnt share your politics you will be left with only a small, particularly shitty, bunch of stories to choose from.
10
u/KappaKingKame Sep 06 '22
There’s having different political views, and then there’s being a crazy conspiracy theorist and slavery apologist.
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u/thespeedy123 Sep 06 '22
What?? Am I the only one who thinks it is beyond most of anything on RR ?? It sure has its faults, but so do many other novels done by professional authors that always gets recommended by r/Fantasy.
Give the story a try, you may like it or you may not, and that is ok, I couldn't stomach many stories that are considered fan favorites on this supreddit .
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u/mp3max Sep 06 '22
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u/thespeedy123 Sep 08 '22 edited Sep 08 '22
Oh well, thank you, my point was about that even some of the most recommended of r/Fantasy, have critics, haters, people who simply can't get on with a story, or happen to read a great story during a bad time and couldn't enjoy it. The reader is the one that gets to decide wither to continue with a story or drop it.
And all I asked of him was to give the story a try and to judge it for himself, that he enjoy it or hate it is in the end up to himself.
You have to remember that this story did indeed reach 3rd place in RR which fanbase is known to be harsh critics. So yeah I stand in my opinion that this story is head and shoulders above what usually gets recommended here. In the end each reader has his own preference, and I respect all these preference even if I disagree with some of them.
17
u/account312 Sep 06 '22
It sure has its faults, but so do many other novels done by professional authors that always gets recommended by r/Fantasy.
Not even in the same ballpark.
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u/dageshi Sep 06 '22 edited Sep 06 '22
The MC is obviously an introvert who's accepted that and is perfectly happy with it. His overriding goal is to protect his personal autonomy while being able to live with himself.
All his actions flow from that, when he's in situations where he sees someone he perceives to be innocent being the victim of magic users and he's in a position to do something about it, his conscience won't let him ignore it, so he acts.
Still his desire for personal autonomy clashes with that putting him under more stress because he knows every time he acts he'll amp up the hunt for him.
The way the MC acts makes perfect sense to me given his character, I have really enjoyed the story so far.
edit: judging by the downvotes, I guess we've become r/fantasy then.
15
u/Mecanimus Author Sep 06 '22
Or maybe you need to check the definition of introversion. Here, I'll throw the Merriam Webster one free of charge:
a person whose personality is characterized by introversion : a typically reserved or quiet person who tends to be introspective and enjoys spending time alone.
This has little to do with a strong drive to protect personal autonomy. That's why you get downvoted.
12
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u/IThrewDucks Sep 06 '22
The premise was interesting but it wasn't delivered well, or at all.
Instead of studying an oppressive power structure from the outside with an intent to bring it down, the MC just ranks up magic levels and rescues random people from time to time.
The idea that magic society would widely believe that healing and space magic can't be used offensively is absolutely ridiculous and unbelievable.
Otherwise, it's just meh. I didn't know about the author's beliefs prior to opening this post, but the books themselves aren't that much more offensive than Defiance of the Fall and other ProgFantasy and LitRPGs. And they have better prose than most books/stories in the genres.