It was still 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.

— Andrew Rowe, Sufficiently Advanced Magic (Arcane Ascension #1)

I really want to love this book, and in many ways I do. I love a good fantasy adventure, and this one qualifies. The descriptions of the world and the characters are vivid and draw you in. In many ways it is a classic light-hearted, twisting LitRPG tale that leads you through a world just similar enough to our own to be familiar, but just different enough to be intriguing – and of course that world has magic.

All in all the story earns a 3.75 of 5 stars from me. I thought the story was interesting, the characters were funny, and I was thoroughly entertained throughout. The only real problem I faced in the book was that it was WAY too dense and complicated. Unfortunately, this is a large enough problem that I couldn’t in good conscience rate it higher. There were so many story lines, so many loose threads, so much going on at times I couldn’t tell if I was coming or going. If this had been broken into two or three books, it would have been much more comprehensible, but as it is there were too many characters and story lines that seemed half finished or abrupt.

A brief synopsis – Corin Cadence lost his brother to the Judgment several years ago, and he is now facing his Judgment. Thanks to a complicated series of events, he finds himself involved in a lot of intrigue at the same time he’s just trying to figure out how to use his new magical abilities (attunement). His father is cold and abusive and his mother has abandoned them after his brother’s presumed death. At university, he picks up a motley group of friends and they try to figure out what is happening and fight the battle together.

The characters that were well-drawn were hilarious and I enjoyed them thoroughly. Professor Vellum was an enjoyable sarcastic sage, Sera was smart and funny and a nice foil to Corin, and Derek Hartigan was an interesting hero. Possibly the best character in the book is Vanniv, a summoned karvensi monster with a cutting wit. However, I wish there had been more time and involvement from Corin’s absent mother, Patrick Wayland, and Marissa Callahan. All of these characters had a great base, but needed more involvement.

All in all, it’s an easy LitRPG read, and if you like this type of books, you’ll very likely enjoy this one. I certainly will be reading the second in the series.

What did you think? Leave me a comment below!

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Nuggets of gold from Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe
1. It was the day of my Judgment, and I was prepared in a thousand ways that didn’t matter.

2. And so, with all the athleticism of a student who spends most of his time reading and enchanting, I tried to jump.