Pretty good

Some of the dialogue and scenes didnt feel terribly genuine but I enjoyed the story and definitely want to read more. Seems like the introduction to a fairly intereating series. ( )

I sure feel like I'm on fire! This is my 9th SPFBO 2017 review!

I wanted to see what the hooplah with this book is because it's currently fighting to win the SPFBO contest (apparently it's just a few decimals away from Where Loyalties Lie, a book that I haven't read yet). I haven't read any of the semifinalists, (Senlin Ascends doesn't count because it was from the 2016 contest), so this was another reason why I wanted to read this book pronto.

After finishing the book, I can see why a lot of people enjoyed it. Is it the best SPFBO book ever? Considering I've only read 10 books out of 900, I haven't read enough books including those from prior years to be sure. But I am surprised that a LitRPG which isn't one of the classic fantasy genres to be gaining so much love.

Now, onto a basic premise of the plot. Corin is a member of a lesser noble house that only a few generations ago was granted that honor due to prior military feats during an ancient war. Corin is snarky and a pretty smart bookworm that doesn't mind cheating his way out of a puzzle. He's also emotionally detached from people and feels uncomfortable when asked for life coaching advice. After his older brother Tristan who was a natural prodigy fails the Judgement test (aka... an optional but expensive and very dangerous test for citizens of Valia but reaps big rewards mainly the chance to be bestowed with a magic granting ability from the goddess Selsys), Corin's family is torn apart. His brother presumed deceased, his mother leaves the house to enjoy the military life and his father reproaches Corin's flaky combat skills.

He isn't fully sure he's up to the challenge of the tower, but what the hell, we are thrown into the action in the very first chapter where he starts his rather... unconventional judgement. The first 10% of the story is awesome and a thrill to read. I don't play RPG games (at least not the ones these kinds of books are inspired from), so the dungeon puzzles were unexpected. After some rather... odd decisions and perhaps getting someone very angry, Corin sort of stumbles into an emergency exit and gets an attunement...

The fun of a huge portion of the book is how Corin tries to find the positives out of being awarded with a sort of engineer/toymaker magic. His father became furious that he wasn't "good enough" for a more combat oriented ability and awards a likely half-sister that was supposed to become his bodyguard named Sera as a new member of the family. She was granted an interesting monster manipulator ability but it isn't until later in the story that we know about the full extent of her abilities... Corin and Sera eventually form a nice brother-sister bond.

I also liked the personalities of the troupe of friends that Corin makes during the novel, each having a different ability that complements with his own. I wouldn't like to spoil too much of them...

Now, onto the bad. A lot of readers didn't seem to like the middle of the novel. That would include myself. Hurling similarities between Lorian Heights and Hogwarts aside, the book is initially about survival. Corin's brother is either dead or at the very least, imprisoned in the tower. Corin's father took him away from school and trained him relentlessly in fencing with strange mana blasting weapons called dueling canes 3 years prior to the first chapter. He's a bit behind in learning scholarly rune identification classes and interpersonal relationships. He either passes the judgement or he dies.

When he oddly enough succeeds in a rather strange way with a so-called "inferior" attunement, he has to start magic university. The stakes of death are dropped and now his worst problems are to rekindle lost friendships with childhood friends Sera and Patrick, pass his grades, and to make some money as an impoverished 1st year university student. What? Did I hear the word poor? This is one thing about this book that I couldn't understand. Yes, Cadence is a lower tiered nobility house, but they must have enough mojo to afford some books. I mean, come on! Okay, so Corin's dad is just one step away from disinheriting him, but his poverty still seems rather odd.

As if lowering the stakes during a huge portion of the novel wasn't enough, I couldn't understand the scope of Corin's ignorance about apparent common world knowledge. Being ignorant about Hogwarts worked well in Harry Potter because the protagonist was raised by muggles and out of his closest friends, Hermione was just as a n00b to the magical world as him and Ron came from a family of very poor social standing to be fully up-to-date with everything that wasn't related to international quidditch tournaments. However, Corin was born into nobility and his parents were reknown duelists. The idea that he hadn't even heard of a monster dueling competition (which seems to be a common activity for nobles in his nation) made me slap my face.

The middle of the book is filled with so many of these plot holed scenes (for story convenience) that the belief factor fell from the roof.

The final third of the novel picks things up and the ending is pretty good. I did however groan when we discovered the identity of the real bad guys (it seems like good and bad guy is sort of a grey area in this novel). So many secrets pulled out of the magician's hat that I wondered if parrot and bunnies would come forth as well.

Maybe I'm being too judgemental of this book because it reminds me too much of that mega hit anime/manga series Hunter x Hunter. The initial arc is the hunter exam and they also have a tower spiral quest. While I did enjoy the tower chapters of this book very much, the entire Hunter exam arc was better. Why? Two characters: Hisoka and Illumi. Nuff said. Didn't hurt that Killua grabs a criminal's beating heart just out of spite. This book on the other hand seems tame to the bone.

If I could compare Attunements vs Nen, I prefer Nen, hands down. The system is much more refined and I liked the whole array of different abilities from summoners. I myself would personality-wise be an Emitter due to my irrational nature or an Enhancer... While Kurapika sort of cheats and can have temporary access to all 6 types of Nen, most users only have free access to their dominant type for the rest of their lives. With proper training, they can obtain some enhancement from the other Nen varieties, but the ability will never reach 100%. I also like it that the stakes with Nen are higher. Do you want to be Kurapika powerful? Accept the risk of falling infirm with a fever at best and certain death at worst. Just look at what happened to Gon at the end of the Ant saga...

As for this novel, I think it would be fairer to compare it to another SPFBO LitRPG book: Dybsy. The book unfortunately hasn't gotten the attention it deserves and in my personal opinion, it's a better book. The stakes are higher, the plot seems to flow much better without a subdued middle part and it has bitcoin jokes. That alone gives the book extra points in my book. If you liked SAM, you'll probably enjoy that book as well.

All in all, while SAM is faulty with a bit too many plotholes than what I'd like, it has a compelling plot and I'll likely enjoy reading the sequel novel whenever it comes out. ( )

I... did not enjoy this book... In fact, I mostly finished it because I started hate reading and playing the "when's the next continuity error" drinking game.

The author is half decent at writing a dungeon crawl. But that's like 10% of the book and the rest is inconsistent, repetitive, convoluted for no reason, bogged down with descriptions of things that never matter (and often change the next time they come up, if they ever do), and full of so many continuity errors that you'd think it was written by committee and never proofread, let alone edited, before publication.

Even without the constantly shifting and inconsistent magic system, the total lack of consistency in what the main character (and 1st person narrator) knows, and the magical items that work completely differently chapter to chapter (like, full on totally different and contradictory mechanisms, mechanics, etc etc, on the same item, depending on the page), there's still the repetitive writing style with the same phrases being used, overused, and then used again until you want to rip the author to shreds and lend him a bloody phrase book.

AND THEN! There's the aggressively redundant bits. Some examples:

"I signed the paperwork to use one of the chambers, and Sera and I stepped inside. We were assured that the chambers were monitored and that Menders would be close by if anything went wrong.
We stepped inside the assigned room."
[Emphasis mine]

"Patrick's hands tightened his hands into fists"

I just.. I can't with this level of bad, poorly edited, drivel. Its the next fucking line and you forgot that they already stepped into the room?!? Did anyone read through this book and actually edit it? There's an editor and a bunch of beta readers thanked at the end, were they asleep?!?! Sure, maybe you miss the bigger ones that change chapter to chapter. Still bad writing (and inexcusable IMO when you're aiming for a consistent deep magical system, you kinda need to pay attention to how your system works and how you've described/designed a thing before you change it 2 chapters later). But to miss awkward, redundant, bs like this when its in the same paragraph? Or the same SENTENCE? Come on. How???

Just... How.

Anyways, don't read this book. I survived it so you don't have to! ( )

Mischung aus Dungeon Crawl und Magieschule. Kurzweilige Unterhaltung, man darf aber nicht zuviel erwarten und muss das ein oder ander Logikloch mal übersehen. Werde mir das nächste Buch aber auch zulegen.
Sogenanntes LitRPG - ein Begriff, den ich bislang noch nicht kannte. Die daraus folgenden Hinweise auf Level und gar genaue Punktzahlen in irgendwelchen Manakategorien fand ich allerdings nicht unbedingt der Atmosphäre zuträglich. ( )

Thee magical system is overly complicated, imo. But, I like that characters. Continuing the series. ( )