Reddit reviews Into the Labyrinth: Mage Errant Book 1

I personally tend to enjoy the magical combat in stories that have very clear magical rules, so that you can try to figure out how characters will use their abilities tactically in order to defeat their opponents.

Some examples:

• The Way of Kings is the first book in the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson. It’s a bit of a slow start – the book is around a thousand pages – but Sanderon excels at world building, internal consistency, and “avalanche” endings where many plot threads come together at once. There are some huge, amazing set piece battles in both the first book and later books in the series.
  
  
• Unsouled is the first book in Will Wight's Cradle series. Will’s series emphasizes intense action and long-term character growth. They’re much shorter and faster paced than most of the other options on this list, but absolutely have a lot of magical combat. (They're probably more focused on that than any of the other ones, really.)
  
  
• Mother of Learning is about a novice mage who gets stuck in a month-long time loop. The magic system is something of a mix between D&Dish schools of magic and anime-style training exercises. We learn more about the magic system as the protagonist does. Lots of fun twists on the genre in there, too.
  
  
• Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers by Ishio Yamagata is fantastic if you enjoy fantasy mixed with mysteries. There's plenty of magical combat in there, with several magic users in the main cast, each with different magic types.
  
  
• Sufficiently Advanced Magic is one of my own books. It's a magical academy novel, but with a style inspired by anime and Japanese RPGs like Final Fantasy, the Tales series, etc. It's very heavy on the magic system side of things, with the main character spending a fair bit of time in classes and studying to learn how magic works. If what you’re looking for is a story where learning how to use magic creatively is a major focus, you might enjoy this.
  
  
• Into the Labyrinth by John Bierce is another magical university novel in a similar style to Mother of Learning and Sufficiently Advanced Magic. Each of the central protagonists has a clearly distinct magical specialization, and learning magic is a huge focus of the story as a whole.
  
  
• Forge of Destiny by Yrsillar is a web serial that started out as a Quest (a form of interactive fiction with user interaction). It involves a young woman studying the art of harnessing her qi in a school-like environment with numerous rivals and dangers. It’s essentially a magical school story, but with martial/spiritual artists, rather than traditional wizards. I strongly recommend it.

Into the Labyrinth, the first book in my Mage Errant series (and my debut novel), follows the adventures of Hugh of Emblin, an incompetent, friendless student mage. When an unusual mage picks him as an apprentice, however, his life begins to take a turn for the better- and the stranger.

When writing Into the Labyrinth, I really wanted to contrast Hugh with all the other socially outcast orphans out there, who tend to be tough, self-reliant, and capable. Hugh's very much not these things- he's got serious mental health issues he has to grapple with, including depression, cripplingly low self confidence, and severe social anxiety. He hasn't handled his difficult past with anywhere near the aplomb you tend to expect from a protagonist, and he really just wants to be left alone and stay out of people's way. Of course, Hugh seldom gets what he wants.

Into the Labyrinth features a fairly complex hard magic system, for those who enjoy those. The sequel, Jewel of the Endless Erg (which features a truly egregious number of dragons), is already out, and I'm currently in the middle of writing book 3.

If you enjoy that type of setting then I highly recommend Mage Errant, I've read the first three books and they are only through 2 years of schooling (albeit they start at like 16). But lots of learning, training and improving.

Into the Labyrinth: Mage Errant Book 1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J675X2C/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_KFYXDbX0H4XEY

You must have a super strict definition of what you consider "progression fantasy" (vs I guess other fantasy that doesn't have strict RPG quantification).

Some other series that I consider progression fantasy and I enjoyed:

• Into the Labyrinth by John Bierce (two sequels are out, although these books tends to be on the shorter side). Like, this book is shockingly short. If I hadn't checked the length after, I would have sworn this was at least twice its 178 pages (which is probably good if the author is crazy like me and considers crazy stretch goals like "adapt this into a feature length film").
  
  
• Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe is a very western magic school progression series.
  
  
• The Fire Within by DK Holmberg is about a good friend that accidentally passes the test to get into magic school, then has to work his ass off to not get kicked out and forced to serve the school as a janitor. (6 books in this series right now)
  
  
• Hollow Core by Gage Lee is basically Wuxia/Xianxia High School (sequel comes out October 29th)
  
  
• Azyl Academy by Chris Vines is another Wuxia/Xianxia High School (sequel comes out November 8th) -- This book has two main weaknesses, the first is the author has way too much meta internal monologue that I think he uses as a "lampshading" trope to justify that a person positioned by a god has a lot of inherent talent (I mean, he already justified it by having a literal god intervene). The other is the lack of a coherent goal (MC just wants to "git gud" because a god told him he would be the difference between a good and bad outcome). But this series is admittedly aimed at "grade level: 5-12" (which seems like a big range to me).
  
  To me "normal" length book is 300-350 pages.
  
  > why aren't established fantasy authors rushing to deliver?
  
  New niche (niche-ier?) genre labels appear all the time, so there are probably a ton of fantasy stories out there that have that "progression" aspect to it that you are overlooking.
  
  Seriously, just climb down through Amazon's category labels to the bottom of fantasy limb and read there.
  
  The difference between "fantasy" and "progression fantasy" is how much the author details the main character(s) montages.

Into The Labyrinth is a group of Very Special Teens from Wizard School That Has A Labyrinth Under It. The whole setup promises plenty of weird and interesting magic. The latter half of the book takes places in the aforementioned labyrinth, where it basically turns into an old-school dungeon crawler. It's interesting and well-written, the world is vivid and alive, the twists are nice but it doesn't lean on them no one is The Supreme Magus.

He's only got 2 books I could find and one is the sequel to the other, so id start with the first one.


Into The Labyrinth

I'll add some of my favorites that you didn't mention. They are mostly Superhero, because that's what got me into self published authors that are frequently on KU.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis Taylor. Great sci fi with plenty of humor and nerdy pop culture references, but also a fare share of danger and adventure. KU has all 3 books in the Bobiverse.

Sensation: A Superhero Novel by Kevin Hardman. This is a YA Super Hero novel, and is the first of 7 along with a couple spinoffs and short stories. The author also has a sci fi series and a fantasy series, but I haven't read them yet. I'm pretty sure all of his books are on KU.

Into the Labyrinth by John Bierce. This is the Mage Errant series. The 3rd book just came out, and there is a post here by the author. This is a book centered on a magical school, and it has a very good and detailed hard magic system.

Fid's Crusade by David Reiss. This is a Super Villain novel, and is darker than a lot of superhero books out there. There are currently 3 books in the Chronicles of Fid. I've only read the first one but I really liked it, and I even bought it when it was on sale so I could go back and read it again sometime instead of relying on it being on KU forever.

Arsenal by Jeffery H. Haskell. Another Super Hero novel, this one is probably in between the other two I mentioned in terms of tone, being darker than Kid Sensasion, but lighter than Fid. The protagonist is disabled and in a wheel chair, but made an awesome suit of armor to become a hero. There are 8 books in the series, and there is another series set in the same world with the 4th book coming at the end of the month. All of them are on KU.

Arcane ascension
Mage errant

Alco, check out /r/ProgressionFantasy/

I will just mention that I happened upon this post and was surprised there was an audiobook available

see, I checked out the page for book 1 as one does and saw no audio format listed, so just assumed none existed

by making this combined pack, discoverability is really reduced

> Which brought me to the book on amazon, easy enough. Except I can't actually buy the ebook. "Not currently available for purchase." Googling suggests regional issues are the reason, but the tutorials I found for changing location hasn't been working.

I have no issue purchasing it on AU Amazon

I've found it's generally easier to find a somewhat generically named book by searching the author rather than the title. If you put John's name in to Amazon, for instance, Into the Labyrinth is the first result to come up.

I need to give We Are Legion another shot, I DNF'd it a while back. I think I had been reading too many books with pop culture references then and had gotten sick of it. I've read the first two Sensation books, but I didn't like the second one much so I didn't put it on the list.

I've been meaning to read Into the Labyrinth for a while, it looks good from the reviews I've seen. I'll have to check out the other two superhero books as well.

Hey man, I'm also from Australia and I just searched up "John Bierce" on the Kindle app and it showed up. For free! I tried finding a link on Amazon for you but I couldn't. Weird. If you have the kindle app, you can download it from there. Or download the app :p Good luck!

EDIT: I tried some more. Try this link?

https://www.amazon.com/Into-Labyrinth-Mage-Errant-Book-ebook/dp/B07J675X2C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1539174516&sr=1-1&keywords=john+bierce&dpID=51I9IvuaRFL&preST=_SY445_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

Try this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Into-Labyrinth-Mage-Errant-Book-ebook/dp/B07J675X2C/