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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/product_reviews/pr_id/113938-Tech-Mage-The-Magitech-Chronicles-Book-1
ASIN: B0758QQ1X1
ID #113938
Product Type: Kindle Store
Reviewer: Jaeyne of the Free Fab Five
Review Rated: 13+
Amazon's Price: $ 2.99
Product Rating:
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Summary of this Book...
From AmazonAran awakens in chains with no memory. He’s conscripted into the Confederate Marines as a Tech Mage, given a spellrifle, then hurled into the war with the draconic Krox and their Void Wyrm masters.

Desperate to escape, Aran struggles to master his abilities, while surviving the Krox onslaught. Fighting alongside him are a Major who will do anything to win, a Captain who will stop at nothing to see him dead, and a woman whose past is as blank as his own.

Caught between survival and loyalty Aran must choose. If he flees he will live, but the Krox will burn the galaxy. Stopping them requires a price Aran may be unable to pay:

Learning to trust the very people who enslaved him.

From MeIt's a bit more complicated than that, but not inaccurate.
Further Comments...
I wanted to 4-star like this book, but I can't. There's so much going for it - great premise, space dragons, a theoretically sound magic system, some good battles, some good writing, and an amusing hedgehog. Though I don't factor it into the rating, it has some solid artwork on the cover. It's always a bonus to have a book that's nice to look at.

Then there's the execution, and the constant battle of the reader asking, "but...why?", because the events make little sense, or the characters act unbelievably, or the situations go from intense to ridiculous within a paragraph. Things that should be easy are difficult, but then things that should build tension and push the story are too easy, and leave the reader going, "that's it?"

There's dialogue that's good, passable and downright bad. There's a joke about "literally" that pops out of nowhere, and would have been funny if I hadn't followed all the seasons of Archer.

All the scenes dealing with the minds of the gods are interesting, and fairly unique. Aran, our MC, is engaging enough once he gets going, and that takes a while. The book's conclusion is plausible, if slightly stretching things, but is interesting.

That's the thing about this book: there's enough good you'll get through it, while complaining about the bad the entire time. The magic system is good, if slightly sketchy on some details, the monsters are worth fighting and have neat tricks of their own, and Aran has the most bad-ass sword in the world.

Yet he hardly uses it.

Me, every battle: USE. THE. SWORD.

The characters themselves are hard to get behind, though Crewes is a keeper, as is Aran (always a good thing when your MC is worth keeping). Voria has potential (I believe) as we move into further books. I'm not sure I'd miss anyone else, although it remains to be seen what Nara can really do. Her character flip was more severe, and she was rather annoying for a while. You do get a bit worn out by characters "not knowing why they're able to do things but they just do them so damn well".

The beginning was strong, the ending was strong, and the middle was not. I skimmed a lot of the middle chapters and lost nothing in terms of story. Even with writing being stronger at the beginning and end, there are still moments there where a POV shift or other random sentence things makes you want to slap the page because you were enjoying yourself up to that point.

This is not a bad book. It sucked me in faster than I thought it would, and even with the middle being what it was, I wanted to know what happened and why, and I wasn't disappointed with the final chapters and eventual outcome. It sets itself up nicely for book two, and whether or not you like serialized books, I appreciate when it's made clear it will happen.

I will say this about the hedgehog: spoiler ▼

Three stars means "I liked it", and I did. I liked it enough to finish it despite the slight slog in the middle. I was far more engaged in the concept than I thought I would have been, and I'm now far more intrigued by the genre as a whole.
Created Feb 20, 2019 at 1:10am • Submit your own review...
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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/product_reviews/pr_id/113938-Tech-Mage-The-Magitech-Chronicles-Book-1