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A review by couldbestephen
The Magestics by James W. Berg
1.0
If you’re looking for a riveting debut fantasy novel, filled with intriguing characters and unique magic, keep looking. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. In an objective/technical sense, this might be the worst book I’ve read in a long time. “The Magestics” is a shining example of the importance of competent editors (both line and developmental) and honest beta readers.
The writing style and voice screams untrained amateur. “Never show, only tell” seems to be the author’s motto. Clunky prose and poor grammar made the reading experience legitimately painful most of the time. The dialogue between characters is atrocious and the tags often make no sense and do not match the energy of the conversation. Em-dashes are never used and ellipses used rarely, making for some incredibly weird dialogue. At any given time, we may be interacting with up to 8-9 different characters, none of whom have a distinct personality other than the traits we are explicitly told about but they never display. And the typos. Oh God, the typos. They somehow got worse as the book progressed. “Feinted” instead of “fainted,” “ladder” instead of “latter”… Even if the author had just been able to hire a line editor to catch mistakes, that would have made this marginally better.
The world building is nonsensical, messy, and often downright contradictory. I think the author was just coming up with things on the fly half the time. Everything we learn about Bergonia and its history comes in painful exposition dumps that stops whatever momentum James was able to build. You’d think the worldwide magic ban would pose more of a problem than it does, but there’s always loopholes and exceptions for why spells are being flung left and right. There’s a difference between “magic” (the spells are mixed up English words, no original language was created here) and Magesti (the nature magic the Magestics can wield). What that real difference happens to be is beyond me and the author. The plot is just 4 groups MacGuffin hunting and none of the hunts are interesting. The biggest crime is how bland everything is. This is just a run-of-the-mill fantasy world with no distinct cultures, basic creatures, and a shitty magic system.
The worst part of this book is how blatant of a self insert fantasy this is. The main character’s name is the author’s name spelled backwards. The Gandalf/Dumbledore insert is the author’s partner’s name spelled backwards (Jesse becomes Essej). The numerous characters we encounter all seem to be named after people the author knows, either employing some weird tactic to hide it (the merpeople’s names are things like Ard-Rich and En-Steve. I want you to guess how you rearrange those to get the real names). The big bad, Drol Greb? That’s Lord Berg. James loves backwards things.
Getting through this book was a work of pure spite. I was never given the chance to be immersed in this world because of all the glaring mistakes and poor writing. I just have to ask if anyone in James’ life has been honest about his skill level as a writer or if everyone legitimately thinks this is peak literature. This book could have potentially been a D class children’s fantasy if more time had been spent actually making it readable. What we’re left with is not worth the money or time.
The writing style and voice screams untrained amateur. “Never show, only tell” seems to be the author’s motto. Clunky prose and poor grammar made the reading experience legitimately painful most of the time. The dialogue between characters is atrocious and the tags often make no sense and do not match the energy of the conversation. Em-dashes are never used and ellipses used rarely, making for some incredibly weird dialogue. At any given time, we may be interacting with up to 8-9 different characters, none of whom have a distinct personality other than the traits we are explicitly told about but they never display. And the typos. Oh God, the typos. They somehow got worse as the book progressed. “Feinted” instead of “fainted,” “ladder” instead of “latter”… Even if the author had just been able to hire a line editor to catch mistakes, that would have made this marginally better.
The world building is nonsensical, messy, and often downright contradictory. I think the author was just coming up with things on the fly half the time. Everything we learn about Bergonia and its history comes in painful exposition dumps that stops whatever momentum James was able to build. You’d think the worldwide magic ban would pose more of a problem than it does, but there’s always loopholes and exceptions for why spells are being flung left and right. There’s a difference between “magic” (the spells are mixed up English words, no original language was created here) and Magesti (the nature magic the Magestics can wield). What that real difference happens to be is beyond me and the author. The plot is just 4 groups MacGuffin hunting and none of the hunts are interesting. The biggest crime is how bland everything is. This is just a run-of-the-mill fantasy world with no distinct cultures, basic creatures, and a shitty magic system.
The worst part of this book is how blatant of a self insert fantasy this is. The main character’s name is the author’s name spelled backwards. The Gandalf/Dumbledore insert is the author’s partner’s name spelled backwards (Jesse becomes Essej). The numerous characters we encounter all seem to be named after people the author knows, either employing some weird tactic to hide it (the merpeople’s names are things like Ard-Rich and En-Steve. I want you to guess how you rearrange those to get the real names). The big bad, Drol Greb? That’s Lord Berg. James loves backwards things.
Getting through this book was a work of pure spite. I was never given the chance to be immersed in this world because of all the glaring mistakes and poor writing. I just have to ask if anyone in James’ life has been honest about his skill level as a writer or if everyone legitimately thinks this is peak literature. This book could have potentially been a D class children’s fantasy if more time had been spent actually making it readable. What we’re left with is not worth the money or time.