This was a DNF for me. The premise of the magic was interesting, but it moved too slowly for me to make it all the way through. I have heard good things about this author, so will try again.

This was a pleasant surprise.

As I get older I find myself reading less and less fantasy, particularly that in the sci fi sub genre. I’m not crazy about the direction this type of fiction has gone in general, and its rise in mainstream popularity has also flooded the market with poor quality offerings.

So I didn’t expect to think much of this book, and was thus delighted by how much I enjoyed it. Despite not being a gamer, I tend to enjoy the more video game-centric books in the sci-fi genre than, say, space operas. In the tradition of books like Ready Player One, this is a fun blend of game and reality.

The story boasts a solidly likable protagonist with a snarky sense of humor that’s more clever than sneering, even if she does wander into moralizing a tad too often. To that end, all the bleating about the evils of capitalism feels a little tired. While I may agree with the author and the character in spirit about this issue, this is an underinformed perspective on the topic and also not something I love seeing this much of in a fantasy novel.

Regardless, it’s a fun story with a clever sense of humor and a solid sense of adventure.

The story translates very well to audiobook format. Typically I prefer female narrators who are pitched lower, but this reader felt so right for the characters that I felt it was well cast despite my personal preferences.

Unfortunately I really couldn't click with the story-telling approach in this book. It's very much a case of it being me and not the novel, I'm sure, and I wish the author all the best.

I wanted to like this one, but I didn't. I liked the protagonist and enjoyed the tone, but that was about it.

DNF audiobook at 79%

My rating: 2 of 5 stars. Probably spoilers ahead (if I even figured out what was happening enough for this to be accurate summary...)

I tried really, really hard to get through this audiobook, but I just couldn't The premise of the story is pretty cool--a couple of megalomaniac tech-y billionaires discover a language that allows them to perform magic through learning linguistic morphemes. They then also somehow use a video game they've developed to surreptitiously train future would-be magicians to develop skills to be able to use this magic.

The worldbuilding is just MESSY though. Turns out these tech guys are also in league with a shady woman politician and Scientology=esque cult leader. And the morphemes are actually aliens. And they kinda communicate through the video games... Which are somehow related to a big doomsday thing... Which the shady politician wants to sacrifice people to avoid... Honestly, idk. Overall, I think this story just needed more focus. Or clearer explanation of the aliens...

The other major reason that I couldn't get into this book is that I didn't really buy any of the characters or relationship. Most of the main characters are women, and they were written unidimensional. The friendships and antagonisms between women also fell very flat. Tbh this feels pretty par for the course when dudes choose to write female-lead books, but I'm always hoping for an exception to that rule. I was also irked at how try-hard the author was in coming across as especially feminist and woke.

Many thanks to RB Media and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this audiobook.

Battle of the Linguist Mages is a super-dense and surrealist political SF/fantasy by Scotto Moore. Released 11th Jan 2022 by Macmillan on their Tor imprint, it's 448 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is such a trippy read. On the surface, it's a virtual reality mashup with a female player who dominates at a game franchise called Sparkle Dungeon. She's recruited to work on an upcoming game in the franchise and finds out that the voice-overs contain words of power which potentially have the power to control people. Under the overlying layer of the plot is the world building, with higher thought comprising a different dimension called the logosphere where sounds have power.

There's a fair bit of navel gazing and pontificating, but overall, it's an interesting if difficult/dense read. There is a lot of theoretical linguistics and a frenetic RPG/VR machinery which won't appeal to all readers, but will absolutely knock the socks off of gamer language nerds (I mean that in a good way, you're my people, I come in peace).

The unabridged audiobook version has a run time of 17 hours 14 minutes and is capably narrated by Justis Bolding. She has a young midwest American accent which suits the main character. She does a good job of the different accents and although this is a difficult and often confusing read, she manages to be precise and unobtrusive. Sound and production quality are high throughout the read.

Four stars. It's anything but mainstream, but for the target audience, it's quite good.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

There are some interesting elements in the magic system, especially for gamers. Even though I wasn't really invested in the characters and plot.

There is so much promise in this book but it gets bogged down with the sheer amount of everything it is trying to do, so I had to dnf this book. There were a lot of technical terms and so much being introduced that I felt we didn't get enough time with the characters to get to know them and really root for them. The narrator did a fantastic job though!

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* Took me a bit to get into this and to understand a lot of this but it was pretty good. Rereading it would likely mean i understood the more tech stuff but overall good read.

Wow, what an adventure. Like Ready Player One on steroids. I really enjoyed the basic premise of this book (which you find out pretty early, but I won't spoil here...) and the way that language was used throughout. Can't wait to check out more from the author.

CWs: Misogyny, Cults, Gun Violence

It's not often that I say that one book should have been a 4 book series but for Battle Of The Linguist Mages, that is most definitely the case. There was so much plot in this book it's hard to believe! However I wouldn't say that the book is fast paced either, it's just very dense with plot and very long.

The plot itself however, was great. I really enjoyed the twists and turns this story took and if it had been a full series rather than just condensed into this one book, I think it could've been a fantastic epic scifi series.

I really enjoyed our main character, the snarky, jaded reluctant hero is one of my favourite tropes but unfortunately because of the sheer density of plot, not enough time was given to seeing her develop into herself and develop her relationship with another female character.

I love seeing sapphic relationships in scifi but unfortunately, because of the lack of development time and time spent together, this couple just wasn't very believable to me. In fact, there was another female character that I thought the MC had a lot more chemistry with and wouldv'e made a better couple.

Something I did really appreciate about this book was the radical approach it took to introducing characters with their pronouns and full description of their race so there's no misgendering or ambiguity towards the representation. However this wasn't done in a way that flowed smoothly within the text and felt quite clunky whenever new characters were introduced. I admire what the author was trying to do in terms of inclusion but it did sacrifice writing quality for me in the process.

Overall, this was a book that could've been a FANTASTIC series but unfortunately it does too much as a singular book.

I think this book has a fantastic premise, but I also think it set out to achieve far more than it felt actually capable of. I had to dnf this one unfortunately. While I thought the narrator did a great job conveying a fun tone, the actual voice of Isobel grated on me, and I didn't have much patience for her as a protagonist. I was fascinated by the original Sparkle Dungeon world as it was introduced, but found the story to become muddy, confusing, and bogged down. This was just not the one for me!

Strange and weird does not even begin to describe this one. I really enjoyed Scotto Moore’s last offering, the novella Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You, and thus looked forward to Battle of the Linguist Mages with great excitement. But it appears shorter form may be the author’s forte.

Describing the premise is also going to tough, because I felt the story was only mostly coherent for the first half. The book follows Isobel, who is the self-proclaimed Queen of Sparkle Dungeon, a virtual reality game. She’s great at player her character, a magic user that uses her voice to cast spells, making her the ideal candidate for Sparkle Dungeon’s development team to test a new game.

But during her time testing, Isobel discovers that the agency is actually researching real magic—using “power morphemes” or complex syllables spoken in a certain way that will compel others who hear them to do whatever the caster wants. All this is made possible by extra-terrestrial punctuation marks, and yes, here’s where the story kind of fell apart for me.

With her new powers, though, Isobel rebels against her handlers as she learns more about their dastardly plans. Joined by her predecessor Maddy, they take their fight to the Governor of California herself, a linguist mage planning to use her abilities to turn the country into her own personal empire.

Where do I even begin with this? I suppose the first half of the book was pretty solid. As you could imagine, I was quite intrigued with the gaming angle, and Isobel, being an avid gamer, seemed like my kind of people. A little obsessed with Sparkle Dungeon, to be sure, but I admired her enthusiasm, her confidence, and strong voice.

The ideas in this novel were also interesting and unique. I don’t think anyone could disagree there. A magic system based on vocalization is something I can’t say I’ve come across before, and I enjoyed the way Moore conceptualized it. And then there are the more eccentric elements of the story, and while Battle of the Linguist Mages started to lose me here, there’s no denying it’s all pretty wild.

But unfortunately, that’s really all I can say was positive about my experience with the book. I do think as the ideas got more and more out there, the author started to lose his handle on the plot and the main character’s direction. As the story descended into more madness and surreal territory, my connection to it also started unraveling, and it became difficult to really feel for Isobel or any of the people around her. Gradually they became caricatures, as silly and nonsensical as everything else happening around them.

It’s a humorous novel at its heart, I suppose, but quite honestly, I felt its cleverness and wit had run its course somewhere in the first one hundred pages. I had just enough patience to finish the book, but I’d be lying if I said it was a pleasure or that I wasn’t struggling close to the end.

Overall, if you like your speculative fiction full of crazy and wild ideas, you might have fun with Battle of the Linguist Mages, but personally I would recommend picking up Scotto Moore’s Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You where you can still get your mind blown while having a much more enjoyable and entertaining time. I just think this one went on far longer than it needed to, and the more it went on, the more things fell apart, and ultimately, the story became something that really wasn’t my cup of tea at all.

Isobel is Queen of the Sparkle Dungeon and has been for the first four games. No one has been able to match her combination of magical spell utterances and dance moves. When she receives an invitation to play-test Sparkle Dungeon 5 for money, there’s no way she can turn that opportunity down. She soon learns that her in-game spell casting spells make her a valuable asset in a plight where the entire universe is at stake, and it’s hard to tell whom she can trust.

The first half of this book was a solid five star read. From there, there were a lot of interesting plot twists, but mechanics/world building wasn’t always there. I really liked the idea of magic based on vocalizations; I don’t think I had seen a concept like that before. I see a lot of people state that they really like this author’s novella <i>Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You</i>, and I definitely want to check it out after reading this book.

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me an audio ARC of this book.

This book really frustrated me, to the point of DNFing. In terms of the positives, the narrator of this was phenomenal and I loved the concept. I read 24% of this on audio before deciding that I needed to pick up the physical. I think that was my mistake, as it made me realize how long this book was. I read about 100 more pages before feeling overwhelmed with all of the terminology and the madness of it all. It's so unfortunate because I loved the premise and was really excited for it. I just think that it needed to be consolidated a bit more and focus on Sparkle Dungeon more, as that was the part I found the most enjoyable.

This story follows Isobel, the top player of a video and called Sparkle Dungeon. When she is contacted with an offer to play test the newest version of the game she can’t refuse. However when she arrives to the site of testing she learns that everything is not as it seems.

I absolutely loved this book. It gives me very strong Ready Player One vibes. The portions of the book that took place in the video game were spectacular. You can tell the author out a lot of thought and effort into holding out the world and the characters. The portions that happen in the real world are just as remarkable.

I really like Isobel. She is quick witted, snarky, and just plain funny. She’s one of my new favorite book MC’s. I would love to read another book from her point of view. The side characters are many but everyone is well fleshed out and had amazing story lines. You can really see the individual character in each one.

Overall I highly recommend this book for sci-fi fans. The action can be a little extreme for younger readers but I recommend it for teens and older.

Writing: 4.5/5 Plot: 5/5 Characters: 4/5 World building: 5/5
A wild ride blending linguistics, gaming, technology development, and yes — saving not just the planet or the universe, but reality itself from the “Thunderstorm” which simply unravels reality as it progresses. This reminded me strongly of the feeling I got from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash — one of my old favorites — plenty of action and a recognizable world which has developed in unexpected and pretty cool ways through technology. A main difference — this story is propelled by girl power — most of the very strong, very capable, and very imaginative characters in this book are women. Plenty of men, too, and the hero(ine) / evil nemesis extremes are liberally distributed among both sexes so it doesn’t set off my wild stereotype alarm. Warning: There is glitter.

There is plenty of snark which the audio book reader pulled off almost too well. Very interesting and convoluted world building in terms of blending linguistic concepts with symbiotic alien lifeforms, influences on the way we think, and embedding power in language. Lots of blurring between “game” life and real life, supported by the ability to move the action (with real implications) between the two. Although I listened to this — and so was unable to highlight great lines — the writing was very good with an impressive vocabulary and well structured thoughts. Way above the quality of your typical SF fare (I say this as a long time SF fan). Some over the top disdain for rich white guys and distrust of big government (which is beginning to bore me) but honestly very little and not the main point.

Original.

At first, Battle of the Linguist Mages read a lot like Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I thought I wouldn't be as into it, however, this book definitely picked up and had its own personality as the story advanced along.

This book tackled a lot of interesting concepts such as video games, governing bodies and how they rule, magic system, and overall very interesting group of characters.

I would definitely reccomend it to those who love video games, and those who are up for fun, fast paced adventures!

DNF at 37.5%. This was a NetGalley book, and I take my responsibilities as a review seriously. But i just could not keep listening to this audio book. The narrator was great, and the plot set up was pretty good. Then they started throwing power-morphines around and it got boring very, very fast. if you've read Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, and you remember the endless battles with people pushing and pulling, these battles will remind you of those. The power also seems unbounded and the plot does not so much as progress as jerk around in strange ways. Some things that were cute - like the introducing people with their pronouns - get old fast. It was self-consciously woke. the game was cute at first, but again took forever to go anywhere, and by the time I gave up I did not care if or where it was going.
It was a shame, because there were some really interesting things here, but this book needs a serious rewrite to be interesting.

It is Gay and fails to Sparkle.

I wanted to like this book so desperately, I enjoyed the concept and the characters, but the way this was written was so dull. It was like a 20 hour monologue.

I wish I had DNF-ed at 20%, when I was really uncertain about whether or not I wanted to continue, because by 50% I had become to invested in needing to know what in the world was going on to quit. Then the ending was so disappointing, I had to go back and listen again because I truly couldn't believe that was it.

I never want to hear the word Sparkle again.

I also found the way individual's pronouns were introduced to be very unusual, especially when it feels like we are existing in an internal monologue. This may be fine when you're reading it in a physical form but hearing something like "Jane Doe She/Her..." when we meet someone feels weird. When in reality, the next line would likely already begin with the individual's pronouns and be able to be ascertained from there.