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Mark of the Fool

A Progression Fantasy Epic

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Mark of the Fool

By: J.M. Clarke
Narrated by: Travis Baldree
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Summary

The gods chose him. He said no.

After his parents died, Alex Roth had one desire: become a wizard. Through hard work, he was accepted into the University of Generasi, the world’s greatest academy of wizardry....

Fate, however, had another plan.

On his 18th birthday, he is Marked by prophecy as one of his kingdom’s five Heroes, chosen to fight the Ravener, his land’s great enemy. But his brand is "The Fool". Worst of the marks.

Rather than die or serve other Heroes like past Fools, he takes a stand, rejects divine decree...and leaves. With his little sister, his childhood friend, and her cerberus, Alex flees for the university, hoping to research the mystery of the Ravener. He’ll make lifelong friends, learn magic from mad wizards, practice alchemy, fight mana vampires, and try to pay tuition.

There’s one small problem. The Mark insists on preventing the Fool from learning and casting spells, while enhancing skills outside of divinity, combat, and spellcraft...that is, unless he learns to exploit the hell out of it.

Explore a coming-of-age magic academy fantasy with a weak-to-strong progression into power, a setting inspired by D&D, detailed world building, and magical science, action, comedy, slice-of-life, and GameLit elements.

With nearly 10 million views on Royal Road, this popular web serial has been completely revised and relaunched into this definitive version now coming to Audible, narrated by Travis Baldree!

©2022 Aethon Books (P)2022 Aethon Audio
Action & Adventure Epic Epic Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Magic Sword & Sorcery Wizardry Royalty Magic Users Funny
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This isn't a bad book, it starts quite quickly and has lots of exciting action scenes sprinkled throughout. That being said, most of it is very slice-of-life-ish: lessons at school, job applications, travel stories, hanging out with friends. It has a very relaxed pace and was good to listen to in the background but I wouldn't want to take this one holiday and give it 100% of my attention because it's not that gripping.

The characters are good. Some of the interactions made me genuinely laugh and I thought having supportive teachers made a nice change for the genre, however, there is basically no interpersonal conflict in the entire book. Pretty much everyone is nice. It makes the book a comforting but uneventful read.

The author apparently publishes this online and I don't believe this is a full book. More likely he just took the first 75 chapters, bundled them together and stuck them on Amazon/Audible. The beginning is short, the middle is huge and there is no ending. I imagine for online readers the end of this book is just another chapter.

So yeah, no story arc, no combat with the villain, no love triangles, no arguments, it's a very comfortable story. The main character is excellent at almost everything he tries to do, his friend is a Mary-Sue and his sister is perfectly docile and nice. Just a bit meh overall.

Baldree's narration was superb and does make this good for background listening when you're driving or doing the ironing.

More of a "volume 1" than "book 1". No ending.

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I enjoyed this book and thought Travis Baldree the narator did well bringing the book to life. Its a standard fish out of water chump to hero story but it does it well.

One thing I didn't like is that the fights are some times hard to follow as it doesn't follow as well as it should. Other than that would recommend this book to anyone who likes this genre of books.

Very enjoyable fiction

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the story was quite original with novel magic usage. this first book establishes the realm, story & characters nicely. did like the wandering inn pun which is another fantasy book. all in all worth the money.

excellent story with an excellent reading

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I really enjoy books where they go into detail about learning magic and the whole concept of this story is great for that.

Great story

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another review where i had to go back and update as I get further into the series. I was initially disappointed with the book as the protagonist runs off and the whole war in Thameland takes a backseat to the university social drama and sitcom shenanigans, but as the books go on, the characters and events slowly build up to a point where the protagonist can return around book 3 or 4 and the wider story i was hoping for really takes off which I realize now couldn't of happened without all that previous background work to make it pay off.
The narrator does a great job as the twists and turns lead me to buying the books on kindle as well because they were several books further along than the audiobooks and that is the highest compliment i can give this series.

University social drama with fantasy flavour

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