Book 1:
There is an interesting premise here: a very powerful wizard wants to retire and build a wizard’s tower. Unfortunately, there isn’t an interesting novel here.
The “magic system” is simple: whatever the story needs to continue is what magic can do. And if the story needs a thing to not be possible, then it isn’t.
The world is a typical fantasy world, and it is treated as such. There is essentially no effort put into either developing or showing anything about the world, other than that there are cities and villages. And the villages have taverns.
The story is written in the first person, which is too bad, since that allows us to see into the mind of the protagonist. He is written as if by someone who has never met a person before. He is contemptuous of everyone, but because he is just such a great guy, he often helps people out anyway. After all, it’s what a superior being would do.
The plot is largely non-existent, except that there is an existential threat “on the other side of the mountains”. This is what passes for innovation, I suppose.
This is reasonably categorized as LitRPG, since there are classes and levels, but it’s really not GameLit, since we almost never hear about those elements, and they don’t seem to have much effect on the story.
I’d like to be able to say something nice about this book, not least because I bought it as part of an omnibus edition, so I already own the other two books in the series. The best I can come up with is maybe the next book will be better? I hope so, because I feel myself embracing the sunk-cost fallacy, and I’m going to continue the series next.
Book 2:
1.5 stars
This book is somewhat better than the first in the series.
The characters are still insufferably smug and not very bright. The magic is still arbitrary. The world is still the most generic of fantasy worlds. And the writing is the epitome of tell, don’t show.
But at least this time, there’s an actual plot that matters.
Nobody reacts to that plot in any sensible way, but it’s there.
Book 3:
Our long literary nightmare is over.
There was a story here, and if it had made sense, that might excuse a few of the flaws of the book and series. Unfortunately, none of the actions of any of the characters made sense, the world was silly, and the magic system was purely “whatever is convenient for the plot”.
There were attempts to build sympathy for various characters, but between their improbability and their unlikable personality, these failed miserably.
All I can say is that I hope the author learned something from writing this and that he was using a pseudonym so that future, better (one hopes) books would not be buried by this … effort.
Do not buy this book; do not borrow this book; and most definitely do not start this series.