Well this was quite a ride. I love humorous sci fi, and on that front this book totally delivers. Now, did I follow what was going on the whole time? No. Though I will say the author did an admirable effort trying to explain to me what exactly was going on. So thank you for that. There are so many ideas in this book and they're all super weird and fun and I enjoyed the book once I let go of "what's going on" and just enjoyed myself!

Review Summary: Just don't.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an AudioARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is the section where I would normally give a brief summary as well as pose questions that may entice a reader to look for the answers....I cannot do that with this novel. Too much is going on and yet nothing is fully formed.

My big issue with this novel is that it feels like alot of pieces of pop culture forced to hang out together(via high school group project) and none of them can agree on what to do, so they all do their own thing and hope you follow when they really have nothing to do with each other. There is an MMO meets DDR, Aliens who possess people's minds(what?), But wait the aliens are punctuation marks that you talk to through magic sounds....I just don't even know how to review this.

I can't even fathom a group of readers that could appreciate this novel for the mess that it seems to try to be. I wish the author would have taken one concept, made unique tweaks to it, and really sold it to the reader. One star from this reviewer, and a warning to steer clear.

Have you ever wished that An Absolutely Remarkable Thing was more like Snow Crash or Neuromancer, or that it was entirely drenched in pink and sparkles? If you have, BATTLE OF THE LINGUIST MAGES is for you. I would die for Scotto Moore. Five stars. I also read this on audiobook, and the narrator was great. (Five stars for her also.)

Audio review first: I thought the narrator did a great job of bringing life and adding clarity to what could have been a very confusing narrative, especially since she didn't have much in the way of emotional beats to go on.



Main review: This is an ideas > story type book. With extra emphasis on the ideas. In fact, saying the story is largely just a framework to deliver those ideas would not be entirely inaccurate. So if that's not your bag, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you probably won't like this. And that would be a fair assessment because from the title, blurb and marketing, you would think you're getting a very story driven narrative and well you're just not.



I did mostly like it but more because it turned out that I was interested in the ideas anyway. I love linguistics. I love physics. The idea of a multiverse folded within cyber space and the knock on effects across realms was really interesting. I also like the somewhat cynical eye turned on how easily we 'kill' in video games and whether or not doing something like that so mindlessly, even in a fantasy setting, might not feed into a personal nihilistic view over time. Not to mention train us to be easier to influence. I don't entirely agree but it was interesting to consider. So yes, there are elements of this book which are very clever.



The half empty is that I am at heart one of the 'story is king' crowd. The story here just wasn't strong enough not to be over powered by the ideas. The characters weren't distinct enough and I found I had no emotional connection to them or investment in the outcome. Added to which, the plot sagged at the midpoint - I think the book could have been about 50 pages shorter tbh. All of that is personal preference but what it came down to in the end was that this was an epically cool concept that unfortunately outwitted itself in narrative terms. I liked parts of it. I was put off by other parts. However if you are an ideas over characters and story reader, this will be right up your street. Imagine <i>Ready Player One</i> had a love child with <i>The Neverending Story</i>, and that child grew up to be a super-nerd who wanted to conquer the universe, then reflected on their life in a spatial numerary language. That's the book.

2 stars

A trippy story that’s like a cross between Wreck-it Ralph & Pilgrim’s Progress. Does that sound like a weird combo? Well, this book is weird! There are several cool concepts (linguistic magic & a dancing-based MMORPG), but the story is unfortunately didactic & also doesn’t make much sense.

[What I liked:]

•This isn’t a romance novel, & really there’s not a lot of character development related to it or anything, but it’s nice to have queer representation in a sci-fi/fantasy book where romance isn’t a big component.

•There is a transubstantiation joke/pun, & idk but I appreciated that 😂 There are several other funny moments too.

•I guess the main thing this book has going for it is how creative it is. There are definitely some cool ideas & world building aspects, especially related to sparkle dungeon.


[What I didn’t like as much:]

•Wow, there is an evil cult involved in a conspiracy & it couldn’t be clearer that it was based on Scientology. I have no issues with someone writing a parody of Scientology, but this was just so close to reality with no creativity or reimagining whatsoever that I’m not sure why they didn’t just call it Scientology? Kind of a lazy rip off.

•So many weird things happen, often hastily explained via info-dumps, yet I’m still not sure what all happened & why? The world building is kinda messy. One example: punctuation marks (not the typography, but the conceptual meanings of them!) are ancient aliens that influence human cognition…but how that all works is never really explained.

•The book is awkwardly self conscious and didactic about certain social issues. It’s not even that I dislike the themes or messages, they’re just not very nuanced or smoothly delivered. For example, the governor of CA & a tech company are in cahoots to take over society, & an anarchist resistance movement is opposing them. Add all the clichés of your average conspiracy theory, & voila, you have this book. If this is trying to be serious speculative literature, it’s too clunky & lacking nuance. If this is trying to be a parody, it’s just not funny enough.

•I’m very unclear on several important character motivations. Why did Olivia kill B? Why were Olivia & Alexander so devoted to one another—were they supposed to be a couple? Why was Jordan helping the MC, if she was indoctrinated in the cult?

•Where the heck did the storm come from? That not having any explanation feels like a huge plot hole to me.

CW: physical violence, mind control, murder, mass execution, giant insect monsters

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]

This was fun in a very confusing but entertaining way. We have a lot of elements and a lot of info that it's sometimes hard to keep up. It takes a while but once you're inside the story, inside everything that's going on, then it starts to makes a bit more sense. It was never completely 100% clear to me what was happening, but it kept me intrigued and I wanted to know what was going to happen.
If you've loved Ready Player One and Two, then this style of writing will resonate with you and you'll like the story. It has a lot of information to sort of memorize to follow the story, so in that way I could compare it to The Martian. In the three books I've mentioned, I've seen people not connecting with the style and the amount of data; it's a style you either get right away, or you just can't seem to get into. Luckily this is the style of story I really like, and, as confusing as it was, I was immerse in the action.

What would you get if Madeline L'Engle's science fiction space universe and Ernest Cline's Ready Player One VR universe had a baby and then that baby vomited sparkles, rainbows and techno music?!? The universe that is Scotto Moore's Battle of the Linguist Mages is what you would get! This was a science fiction acid trip, a veritable firehose of stimuli. The creativity was off the charts. It was very fast paced. Get ready for quite a ride when you pick up this one.

::deep breath:: Alright, settle in. Lets see if this is even going to sound SOMEWHAT coherent. So I’ll start with some interest-catching buzzwords or phrases to get you into the headspace of this glitter-bomb of a science-fantasy adventure.
– Dance Music
– Dungeon Crawler
– Transmutation
– Morphemes
– Interpunct
– Logosphere

Did i lose you there a little at the end? Yeah, it gets weird.

First off, lets talk a little about the author of this ‘multiversal’ dance party Mr Scotto Moore himself. Author of the novella YOUR FAVORITE BAND CANNOT SAVE YOU (which i loved!) Scotto Moore is not only an author but also a Seattle playwright who wrote and starred in the horror/comedy play H.P. LOVECRAFT: STAND-UP COMEDIAN! and written and produced 3 seasons of an online scifi/comedy web series ‘The Coffee Table’. He had also wrote 2 other plays to note ‘The Balcony‘ and ‘Duel of the Linguist Mages‘ which produced the seeds of inspiration for this book. This is a Science-Fantasy prevent-the-destruction-of-the-world story.

Getting into the story itself was quite the experience. For the first third of the book I was absolutely loving it. Isobel was hilarious and the descriptions of the Sparkle Dungeon game was gold. Kicking ‘feral rainbows’ always got a chuckle out of me. The slights to streaming music services and all things disco balls and weaponized EDM artifacts was also great.

Then things get turned up a little. We’re now traversing through 3 different worlds. The logosphere, the Sparkle Realm, and reality with a cast of characters that got a little muddy to follow. Alliances fell and then mended, we encounter aliens and apparitions and sentient NPC (OH MY!) all the while going deeper into the rabbit hole to defeat this impending threat of the ‘unraveling’ that will destroy humanity. The only way to get enough power to defeat it is to suck the essence out of a few million people to power ‘god mode’.

(side-note: I watched an interview where Moore cites ‘The Library at Mount Char’ as a book that inspired his writing, and I feel like that’s a really good companion to this book because things get crazy.)

This is a book that looks light and fun on the surface, and keeps you smiling through the beginning. But I think it’s in the latter half that some readers will lose that ‘spark’ (no pun intended) and fall off the wagon. You have to really swim through some multiverses and psychological coercion to get through to the end, though a satisfying end it was.

After finishing the read there are a lot of thoughts that start to bubble up and, upon reflection, there were pieces that were overly complex and I don’t feel were fully necessary. (I will not mention to avoid spoilers) But also, it’s that same complexity that makes this book admirable praise-worthy to some, though confusing to others.

All things considered, do not take this book at face-value. What looks like a fun ‘Ready Player One’ sparkly video game book is actually a mental exercise in reality-bending concepts and world-ending stakes with a sharped-tongue main character who loves a good groove and hates capitalism. There are a couple plot holes and loose threads that left me with questions at the end, but, did I have a good time? Yes. Yes i did.

Audiobook: I loved the narrator. However, I listen to audiobooks at 2x speed and at that speed the audio was borderline unlistenable. The voice sounded like it was being put through an alien voice filter. This should definitely be fixed before publication.

Story: Very fun story with a great main character. At times, it did feel like just watching someone go through the motions of a video game, which wasn’t compelling. But those times were outweighed by interesting characters exploring a truly great premise with excellent pacing. The writing isn’t amazing, but it’s definitely fun and modern. Introducing every single character with their race, gender identity, and pronouns was super clunky and added nothing to the story. This is a wild ride of a tropey SFF adventure that incorporates some really interesting thoughts and plot points. I had fun listening and predict this book will do well. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the audiobook ARC.

I'm truly at a loss for words... have absolutely no idea how to review this book. It was just a continuous bombardment of ideas, concepts, storylines... we had aliens (that were punctuations? Still can't get my head around that), spellcasting, teleportation, transmutation, sentient AI, dungeon crawling, house music, Empire of California... have to say in the end it was all a bit too much and was just hoping to get to the end so I could move on. Really enjoyed the references to gaming and the promising world-building of Sparkle Dungeon, but the book was just too ambitious, and a bit too unfocused, which meant I came out of it feeling empty. 3 stars for effort, but not that well-executed. Thank you Netgalley for the advanced copy.

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.

Ever read a book that makes you stop and ponder your place in reality? But it is so awesome that you sparkle-yeet reason out the window and enjoy the awesome. Scotto Moore's "Battle of the Linguist Mages" does exactly that, and with more instances of the word sparkle than I think I have ever encountered.

Basic premise is Isobel is the Queen of a VR game called Sparkle Dungeon, and is uniquely ideal to join in a cabal that has been using it as a training platform of sorts. To utilize parts of speech to create Power Morphemes that influence reality. Like magic. And then things get weird, and awesome, then super weird again.

Reasons to read:
-Feral baby rainbows
-There are archetypes of...antagonists that I enjoy seeing things happen to them
-Unique take on "magic"
-Holy crap I am glad I was brought up learning about different dimensions, quantum theory, and dated a linguist in uni so these concepts made sense to me from the jump
-Isobel is a mood

Cons:
-Knowing that our leaders definitely would throw us under the bus to save their own asses and power so these depictions are accurate 😐

Narrated by Justis Bolding, love the deadpan delivery on the apocalyptic bits.

I want to preface this review with the fact that this is not my usual fare of book. I don't usually read contemporary fantasy and despite being an avid gamer, I don't typically read about video games or gamers. The premise of this book, however, was so unique that I wanted to give it a try and step out of my comfort zone, even as I was initially introduced to 'Sparkle Dungeon'- an MMR that seems to cross Final Fantasy XIV with an EDM fever dream.

Our protagonist Isobel is the "Queen of Sparkle Dungeon", since she's remained at the top of the leaderboard since the games inception and has hoarded a number of rare artefacts from being the first to complete various DLC and challenges. She uses a vocal commands in the game, which leads her to being recruited to work at the company that developed those commands for exclusive use in Sparkle Dungeon. Only it turns out, that those commands work in more than just the game- these "Power Morphemes" or linguist magic can also affect reality.

That is one of the many interesting concepts in this novel. I'll lead with one of the earliest revelations- that punctuation marks are aliens that live in our brains after fleeing their own dimension, and the "linguist magic" that is the primary form of combat in the book works by forcing the aliens alter our thoughts and perception. A cool idea, no doubt, and it's one that the rest of the plot and the world's "magic" rests on. Where the novel fell short for me, was how Isobel just took this as a gospel truth after first being introduced to the concept of power morphemes and the punctuation marks. This trend of telling, rather than showing, persists throughout the novel.

The primary antagonists are a cabal reminiscent of Scientolo/gists and similar "religious", money driven cults. They use power morphemes to further their agendas in conversion, in helping political leaders (one specifically) gain traction, and with a specific interest in using "power morphemes" in advertisement. These guys are so obviously evil, it's a little unbelievable that Isobel takes so long to realise that she's been working for the bad guys the entire time.

I DNF'd this book at 40% after doing my darndest to push through, knowing that The Battle of the Linguist Mages was a different kind of book for me. Unfortunately, with the book taking a tell, rather than show approach, I felt a bit like a captive audience to the antagonistic cabal in question, being told X, Y, and Z things about a world that I never felt immersed in or felt that I experienced with Isobel. Isobel's character itself was dry and never developed past her "sassy Queen of girl gaming" persona. You don't find yourself particularly liking any of the characters, but you don't feel particularly pressed to loathe the antagonists either. They are even blander than Isobel and you don't feel as if you can tell one from another.

As a book seller, I really try to picture who I would recommend a book to, even if it isn't my cup of tea. My thought is that someone who is into conspiracy, video game fandom culture, and a very specific kind of social justice may enjoy this book more than I did.

As a last critique, this book's approach to pronouns was very odd. I don't know why the author thought it necessary to introduce each character by their pronouns and then their race, rather than just using the character's pronouns as they discussed them. It felt disjointed and forced. If this was intended to be progressive, I feel like it was poorly thought out, as Isobel goes on to guess at the pronouns of a couple characters based on how they dress and present, which is neither necessary nor accurate in real life.

I was kindly provided this audiobook by Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This one went completely over my head.
No faults to the narrator (I truly liked her), but I just couldn't follow the story, it was too confusing for me and gave up after one hour or so of listening.
I think this is a case of "It's not you, it's me" issue, so I'm still giving it 3 stars because I *have to* give it a rating and don't want to be unfair either way.

This book is kind of a mess, but I’ll give it this: it’s a stylish mess.

It’s also pretty fun, and definitely ambitious. Epic, sprawling, and plot driven, it nevertheless has a main character whose voice carries the novel, aided by Justis Bolding’s cheeky, infectiously humorous narration. The book is not only inclusive, it’s *insistently* inclusive and that was refreshing.

If I had to do comps for this story, it would be Arrival by way of Ready Player One with a distinctly millennial sense of humor.

Clocking in at just over 17 hours long on audio, it may seem daunting and its cast of characters almost calls for a dramatic personae, but I think it reads quickly and for those willing just to roll with it, I think it’ll be a rewarding read.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC (audiobook).

This book was not what I thought it would be.
It's a Ready Player One kind of book, just with more aliens and magic of some sense. The games descriped in the book feels like a mix between Crypt of the Necrodancer, Singstar or Stepmania and an mmorpg, which I kinda liked, but the main character felt very annoying as the chapters went by with her just talking about how good she is at playing the games.

Then the book went from zero to a hundred in no time, and the story just went crazy.

I can absolutely see people liking this book, maby if you're more into the linguist- part and a silly/comedic/weird story, but for me it did not hit right.

I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed this book. It is pure, unadulterated fun. It has a fairly inclusive cast, whimsical flights of imagination, and spark.

Do you ever read a book that’s so utterly nuts, you have no real way of describing what you have just read? No words I choose could ever convey just how utterly insane this book was. I don’t even know how to go about thinking about it.

Let me attempt—most likely in vain—to give you some idea of what this book is about. First of all, there is a video game. Our protagonist, Isobel, is the undisputed champion at this video game, so much so that she is dubbed the Queen. And then this video game, in ways that remain inexplicable to me, starts to spill over into real life. That and there is the discovery of a shadowy group of people learning magic and manipulating everything.

Honestly, a lot of this book I am still really not clear on and ended up just going with the flow.

Which is possibly my first point: as much as I don’t mind not getting everything and just going with the flow, perhaps at times it was too much here. Like, I came out of this book with only a vague idea of what I had just read and that’s really bare bones vague. Granted, this could be that I wasn’t paying enough attention to this one. That’s entirely possible. However, even then, surely I shouldn’t come out of it with so little an idea as to what happened that I couldn’t even begin to explain it?

I will grant, though, that this concept alone is wild, so obviously the book is going to be as wild to accommodate it. And it was, genuinely, nuts. It was as though the author said, “well why can’t this happen” to every seemingly impossible thing. Which is energy I can respect, truly, even if it makes for an occasionally incoherent world. It was that energy that kept me reading this one, even as I got more and more confused.

Because, world and plot aside, the rest of this book is somewhat forgettable (although to what extent I will remember the plot at all, let alone in detail, remains to be seen). The characters were just not that compelling. I couldn’t even tell you much about them. Not to mention the entire thing gave off a “haha look aren’t I funny” tone, without actually being that funny, barring a couple of points.

A quick note on the audiobook too before I close, since that was the format of this ARC: I actually quit listening to it after less than 10% and picked up an ebook to finish off this one because, seriously, they couldn’t have picked a more irritating narrator for me. A lot of what I find irritating about narrators is things they cannot change, basically amounting to how their voice sounds, and how it sounds sped up to 3x normal speed. Here, I just found the narrator’s voice too annoying and the way they read almost a snail’s pace at normal speed. And even when I sped it up to 3x, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get past the irritation of her voice. (Apologies to the narrator, of course, for being so easily annoyed, but that switch to ebook probably made this book a 3 star read and not a 2 star one.)

So. On the whole, I would recommend this book. I’d just suggest you pay a bit more attention to it all than I did.

This book promised to be a mix of linguistics and fantasy and I was ready for it. But I'm sorry to say it didn't work for me and I had to DNF about a third of the way in.

I really enjoyed the first 15% or so. But after that I found that I was losing interest.

One problem I had was that I couldn't distinguish any of the characters. They had no clear motivation or way of speaking. It was impossible to know who would do what, or why they'd do it, because there wasn't anything driving them. There was this cast of characters but at the end of the day they all could have been one person.

I also found the explanation for the magic system, or whatever you want to describe it as, to be quite weak. I couldn't believe it. We're just expected as readers to go yeah ok that checks out when it doesn't. I want something to back up what I'm reading, even in a fantasy book. Something to ground it within that world.

A lot of stuff started happening, we get lots of info dumps, and by 30% I didn't care about the characters and had a headache.

I really wanted to like this and I do feel guilty for writing this.

I also found it really irritating that as each character was introduced, Isobel would make a point of saying she/her or he/him or they/them. Like, she'd specifically say something about their pronouns and how she knew them because she'd read their Twitter bio, or whatever. I'm trans and I certainly don't speak for all trans people but this felt really awkward. Surely we know that Isabel knows their pronouns because she'd just describe them, rather than having to make a performance of telling us?

There's also an example of a disabled character, deaf, and I felt a little weird about it. His cochlear implant changes how the magic works on him, and honestly cool. But he was basically a hearing person who for plot purposes is deaf, if you know what I mean? Deafness didn't seem to have any other impact on him. On speech and language acquisition, on job opportunities, on culture. And I see this happening all the time. A disability is thrown in to move the plot along but the authentic details of disability are left out.

DNF at 33%
I gave this book a fair chance - I wanted to give up at 7% - and I really didn't like it. I was teetering on the edge of commitment to completing it anyway, until I realized I'd be giving up 11 1/2 more hours of my life. Hard pass.
Battle of the Linguist Mages is peppered with slang that attempts to be cool, cringe-inducing behavior, and disconnected jumps from scene to expositional scene. Speaking of jumps, get ready for a lot of leaps right past detail or logical thinking. The story maintains an impressive balance of poorly explained, underdeveloped world-building despite regular info-dumps.
Justis Bolding does a fine job of narration for the audiobook. I know the audio version is a straight reading and not an audio drama, but I still felt over and over that something was missing. A story so focused on vocalization and sound that makes no effort at portraying it through an audio medium seems like a missed opportunity.
This book repeatedly brought to mind Ready Player One (which I also didn't like, but I swear I don't hate all video game centric stories!!) so while it wasn't for me, I imagine this book will be perfect for Cline fans.