Review: Sufficiently Advanced Magic

Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My coworker recommended me this big old self-pubbed piece of fantasy, a sprawling litRPG kind of novel that makes me think of the time a certain fantasy author - mostly YA, but dipping his toes into adult fantasy these days - once asked me to try my hand at writing that subgenre with him, but I had to say no because I didn't think I could do it justice. Seeing this example of litRPG live and in person, I think my initial assessment was right - it's a genre I wouldn't get right if I were to attempt it. Though maybe I can get to that level of epic someday, a word count comparable to Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive and a big world map full of complex geopolitics.

Various other reviews on this website suggest that Corin, the protagonist, is autistic, and somehow extrapolate that from the fact that he's largely asexual (and also touch averse) until a particular mysterious classmate asks him out to the dance. Up till then, the very idea that someone could be interested in him never crosses his mind, and I can relate to that. But to those reviewers: think about how ableist that is of you, assuming that his lack of desire is because he's disabled, or at least coded as disabled.

Though this book could have easily been about 200 pages shorter than it was, it was still a fast moving read, especially once we get to the academy and we start learning a little more about the magic system. A sort of gemological rainbow, with white Quartz as the entry level and progressively stronger magic from red Carnelian to blue Sapphire, though I suspect there'll be at least one Amethyst mage by the time this series is over. While the series is pretty well grounded in fantasy, there's a touch of sci-fi steampunk magic going on as well, with mana-powered motorcars coming into vogue. With a lot of nations in this universe being somewhat Asian coded, it's giving me some real Legend of Korra vibes. And I particularly liked how the story's romantic element goes kinda from lovers to enemies, an inversion of the extremely common trope dynamic these days (I almost said tripe, Freudian slip there), except they barely have time to be lovers to begin with.

And the ending.

Surprise, surprise.

Needless to say, I've already got the second book on order at the library in Gresham.

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