“It was too early for me to interact with the living, and in spite of my general fondness for Sera, she still was another entity and thus a toll on my exhausted mind.”
Five years ago, Corin Cadence’s brother entered the Serpent Spire — a colossal tower with ever-shifting rooms, traps, and monsters. Those who survive the spire’s trials return home with an attunement: a mark granting the bearer magical powers. According to legend, those few who reach the top of the tower will be granted a boon by the spire’s goddess.
He never returned.
Now, it’s Corin’s turn. He’s headed to the top floor, on a mission to meet the goddess.
If he can survive the trials, Corin will earn an attunement, but that won’t be sufficient to survive the dangers on the upper levels. For that, he’s going to need training, allies, and a lot of ingenuity.
The journey won’t be easy, but Corin won’t stop until he gets his brother back.
Sufficiently Advanced Magic is the first book in a, currently, four book series called the Arcane Ascension. I’m not sure what the exact genre categorization is for the book, but I would put it in the realm of being a progression fantasy, I’ll explain why I chose that a little later. For the whole book we follow a single point of view belonging to Corin Cadence. Corin is the second son of a noble family that received their status as a reward for distinguished military service. The book starts with Corin about to begin his Judgment in the serpent spire. The Judgment is a trail that people who come of age take to acquire an Attunement or the ability to use magic. It is this same trail that, like the synopsis says, Corin’s brother never returned from. We get to follow along as Corin works towards the lofty goal of reaching the top of the spire so he can ask the favor of the goddess to get his brother back.
First of all I loved this book from start to finish, it was supposed to just be a nice little break from my current read, but I ended up getting completely pulled in and switched this to my main book. So let’s get into what I thought about the book. As usual with the first book in any fantasy series we slowly get introduced to the world we find ourselves in. I know that one of the reasons that a lot of people don’t like fantasy books is that a lot of times the first chunk of the book is one big info dump explaining the world and all its players and where everything fits. Personally I never really minded it, but I know that it bothers a lot of people. While I don’t mind it, I prefer when an author gives you the necessary information up front but doesn’t dump on you, and then you slowly have the world fleshed out for you throughout the book either through additional information or as the characters learn it themselves. This is the route that Andrew Rowe takes with this book. There is a good amount of information you need to learn such as the magic system, politics/countries and how everything interacts, but I feel that Andrew does an excellent job of working that info into the story itself so that you never feel like you’re reading an info dump that disconnects you from the story. There’s nothing worse than moving along in a story line only to have to stop and read three pages of info before jumping back into the story, very jarring. I guess to go along with this we can talk about the world building of this particular book series, since this is usually a huge part of info dumps. While it is amazing when you read a fantasy book that has this immensely complicated world with 50 different political entities to keep track of across 4 continents, it’s definitely not necessary to have a good story. This is something else that I think really made this book easy to fly through, while it does have an ever-expanding world that is introduced to us throughout the book, I never felt like I was struggling to keep straight where everyone stood and how the world was interacting. Granted I have only read the first book so maybe it will get way more complicated, but that’s an issue for the future.
Next let’s talk about everyone’s favorite subject when it comes to fantasy books, the magic system. Like I mentioned early we join Corin as he is about to start his Judgment inside the Serpent Spire. This Judgment is a trial that one must complete in order to be granted an attunement which determines the type of magic you will be able to use. If you are successful in receiving an attunement you will be enrolled in a school that teaches you how to use your specific attunement followed by required military service. You are able to gain more attunements on subsequent visits to the tower by ascending the floor trying to reach the top. One thing that I liked about this magic system is that it’s not the exact same across all of the different countries. Remember that Serpent spire I mentioned? Well, each different country is usually founded around one of those towers and they all give out slightly different attunements. For example, the country that our main character calls home has 8 different attunements: Elementalists, Shadow, Diviner, Shaper, Mender, Enchanters, Summoners, and Guardians. Neighboring countries will have similar attunements to these, but they might work slightly differently. The example that you hear about early in the book is the comparison between summoners and soulblades, which is the similar attunement from a neighboring country. Summoners make contracts with creatures where they can later summon fragments of that creature or channel some of that creature’s power, whereas soulblades bind creatures to weapons allowing them to infuse that weapon with the creature’s properties and also are able to summon that creature periodically from the weapon. So, while they do very similar things, both classes are distinctly different. I thought this was a great addition to the world since we get the basic run down of the common magic “classes” but they are not set in stone as you move around the world. You always have to be aware that someone you run into might have something vastly different that what you are expecting. One last thing I’ll touch on about the magic system since it ties into why I categorize this as a progression fantasy is that there are distinct levels when it comes to magic. You start at quartz and work through different levels of power until the very top level which is sapphire. This way of categorizing someone’s power with the use of level distinctions is something I’ve seen fairly frequently in progression fantasy so that’s why I put it into that category. That’s as far as I want to explain the magic system since I think it’s more fun to get into as you read but suffice it to say that I am really enjoying the feel and simplistic yet complicated nature of the magic system.
As far as the characters and the storyline goes, I think that both are very solid. Maybe it’s my love of progression fantasies talking, but I was hooked from the very beginning. While the plot is very well thought out and executed I always felt like it was on a fun adventure as I followed Corin’s pov. I think this is accomplished through the fact that the book doesn’t take itself too seriously and our main character is quick witted and never misses an opportunity to crack a joke even during the most dangerous or serious of circumstances. The ensemble of characters we meet throughout the book are all unique in their own way so I never really felt like they were just generic mage # 3, which is always helpful, and I found myself genuinely interested in finding out what their backstories were. I always hate when you run into characters that are so generic that you wonder why they were included in the story, but fortunately that wasn’t the case with this book. One of my favorite characters that we meet is Deryk. I don’t remember how he was initially described, but in my head all I can picture is Pedro Pascal’s character from Game of Thrones. I really should go back and see what he was actually described like, but I probably won’t (lol).
Overall, I would say that this book was a very strong start to a series and definitely hit all of my marks when it comes to a progression fantasy. I can’t wait to dive into the next book and see where Corin will take us.
As usual I feel like my reviews end up being more just me rambling, but that’s just who I am so I can’t be bothered to change to something more structured. Maybe one day, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
The Shadow Library 