Sufficiently Advanced Magic Book Review

Sufficiently Advanced Magic is a book written by Andrew Rowe. It is part of a two book series called Arcane Ascension. The first book was published on February 26th.

Arcane Ascension takes place in a world filled with magic. Upon reaching a certain age, one enters a spire for their judgement, where they go through battles and puzzles. They either die, or finish and receive an attunement. Attunments allow you to use specialized magic. There are guardians, given special strength and defense. There are shapers, given the ability to create and manipulate objects. There are elementalists, who can control fire, wind, and electricity. There are dozens more, each with unique abilities. Corin is the son of a low class noble, years ago his older brother took his judgement and never returned. Now, Corin has made it his mission to get a great attunement and climb to the top of the spire to ask the goddess herself to bring back his brother. For Corin though, it becomes much harder with a support oriented crafting attunement and the strongest people on the continent hunting him because he saw more than he should have.

I really liked this book. I loved the development of Corin. As it is crafting based, there was very good progression but Corin was also unique in the fact that he wasn't afraid to battle. He would make cool trinkets that would give him the upper hand in any type of battle he was in. I liked his friends as well. There was believable, and witty, dialogue that made reading the book fun. I also really enjoyed the world the author crafted, I'm sure there are others similar to it but it still felt unique, and I doubt anyone else executed it in the way Rowe has. I really enjoyed the variety of powers others had, the challenges Corin faced, and the variety of what Corin could make. It all fit together in the coolest way and made this a great book. The book was more of a Gamelit book though. There weren't really statistics, save for mana capacity and amount, which wasn't shown often. However, the book definitely had the concrete statistics feel, the abilities and items were well described and had obvious limits. I didn't really find much wrong with this book except for the ending and the passage of time. To elaborate, the ending was bad. It ended on an odd note and left the story hanging open. Amazon calls it a finished series, which I hope it isn't but maybe it is, and the author has started writing other books for different character origin stories. There are now two books for one of those characters, and I am wondering if he is going to return to this series. That second point was the time. There are close to 1400 pages in the series, but everything takes place in about six months of time. It is a busy six months, but it still seems like it would be longer. There isn't a dull moment for the book but I think the book makes the time pass weird. What I would think would be over a year, only happens in six months. That is the thing I don't like about it, I think the author tried to just say that it all happened in six months, when in actuality it would have taken much longer. Overall, great book. Great story, good character development, witty dialogue, and well defined abilities and skills. I definitely recommend this book, I think you will enjoy it.