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The Blacksmith's Son

Mageborn, Book 1

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The Blacksmith's Son

By: Michael G. Manning
Narrated by: Alex Wyndham
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About this listen

Mordecai’s simple life as the son of a blacksmith is transformed by the discovery of his magical birthright.

As he journeys to understand the power within him he is drawn into a dangerous plot to destroy the Duke of Lancaster and undermine the Kingdom of Lothion. Love and treachery combine to embroil him in events he was never prepared to face. What he uncovers will change his understanding of the past, and alter the future of those around him.

©2011 Michael G. Manning (P)2022 Podium Audio Action & Adventure Coming of Age Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction
All stars
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Outstanding book cannot wait to sink my teeth into another universe created by Manning.

Onwards!!!!

Amazing

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I am enjoying the first of Mageborn series having listened to the Art of Adept series but I am sad to say the narrator is driving me up the wall. He accentuates every vowel so long becomes looong , again becomes aaagain and soo on. Once you have heard it you can’t unhear it and it’s very off putting!

Enjoyed the storyline

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I had feared I'd been through the last of the good stuff having being largely disappointed with the last half dozen titles, until I found this one. This is certainly not bottom of the barrel.
In fact it's been a while that I've looked forward to menial tasks just so I could slip my head phones on and disappear into a good book.
It's faced paced, interesting story that doesn't follow the more common line themes in this genre. I would liken this closely to "The Legend of the Arch Magus", also a fantastic series.

The only negative are the strange inflections of the narrator at the end of each sentence. It's almost as though the narrator is reading a tag line from the latest action movie trailer. I can get past the movie trailer stuff though because Alex Wyndham does have a good voice for narration and his voice acting for the various characters helps bring the whole thing to life.

Topping up my credits now to make sure I have enough for the whole series so far.

Climbed out from the bottom of the barrel

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what is with the way he ends every single sentence like it's a massive revaltion?

a very good boooooook

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I've listened to first 3 books in Manning's Art of the Adept series and I must say that while I did enjoy those books Mageborn almost feels like it was written by a completely different person. There's a lot more humor here and the dialogue is written in such a way that the characters feel a lot more real than they do in Art of the Adept.

First of all I'm happy that the first book in it's entirety is mainly about the main character understanding who he really is and the entire book is spent in the castle he goes to with his friend at the very start, as a result the story doesn't feel incredibly rushed like it does in most stories like this.

If you're like me you'd probably expect for the main character to be forced into some extremely dangerous escape from the castle, chased by assassins within the first 3 hours and then he gets saved by some great old wizard in the forest who will train him by the end of the book. That's how most books like this would go but not here, that's not what Manning wanted for this series and I'm so pleased by the first entry that I immediately bought the second one.

Also it's pretty refreshing to listen to fantasy books that aren't at least 20 hours long for once. That said considering how short the first few books are it would be nice if we could buy the whole thing in 2 parts. The entire series is about 60 hours long so I feel like it wouldn't be unreasonable to combine the first 3 books into one collection and do the same with last 2 books.

That said if the first book is any indication of quality then I'll gladly spend that money and I'll probably end up going through Champions and Embers of Illeniel as well. Those two series are the main reason why I brought up how expensive this could get because I'm looking at a reading order of 11 books. I'm not sure about Riven Gates yet but Embers of Illeniel is what I'm really excited about so I'm starting here with Mageborn.

If you wanna get into the series as a whole this is the reading order as recommended by the author: Entire Mageborn series, Embers 1, Champions 1, Embers 2, Champions 2, Embers 3 and Champions 3 followed by Riven Gates series.

Well written,fun and superbly narrated story

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