A Sense for magic

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Vance is a young man who has been blind since birth. He lives with his father and older brother. Over the years, he sought remedies for his affliction but had no luck.

This year, an Arcanist visits the small town of Wethermane. Vance is curious and intends to visit this powerful stranger, hoping for either help or hope.What he receives is something else, something greater - opportunity.

This book will follow his tale from afflicted young man to budding Arcanist, his struggles along the way, and hopefully a little humour.

Book cover art by:Ollie Wodge

Information

Status
Hiatus
Year
2021
Author
JNorm

Tags

FANTASYADVENTUREMAGICPROGRESSION

Royal Road Stats

Rating
4.6/ 5.0
Followers
4,002
Views
1,123,674

Chapters(55 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(10)

  • tockblueRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    Solid characters, MC with growth and empathy who ISN'T the linchpin/sole character with agency. Me gusta.
    Progression focused but not to the exclusion of plot, stakes, character.
    Looking forward to reading more, especially as the wider world gets fleshed out and the character gets challenged properly. Would also like to see more counterpoints to the MC, more abilities and motivations in others.
  • Peter HeitmanRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    The story begins with a young teenager who suffers from a disability. Throughout the story the MC grows,exactly what should be central in a PF story. The MC grows personally, in friendship and in knowledge and ability with magic. The MC faces just enough challenges to make the story interesting.
  • PhiFellRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    TL;DR: While it certainly has flaws, it's a thoroughly enjoyable exploration of magic in a high fantasy world.
    Story: if you enjoy high fantasy and magic systems, you'll probably like this.  It's not mind blowing but there's enough novelty to keep it interesting.  It's fun, mostly lighthearted (more on this later), and it moves at a good pace.  There are a couple points where it seems like certain things are glossed over, though it's not too bad. I'll elaborate more in the problems section.
    Grammar: sufficient.  I can only recall one mistake, and there's not too much in the way of awkward phrasing.
    Style: fine, but not amazing.
    Characters: reasonably multidimensional, but sometimes fall a bit flat.  There's not a ton of nuance, but that's not necessarily bad.  There seems to be at least an effort to make the good.guys imperfect, and the bad guys at least slightly sympathetic.  Its not badly done it's just that it feels a bit YA novel-ish if you get what I mean.  Definitely lots of tropes but no worse than many novels.  Just go in with the right expectations.
    Problems:
    Trauma (and the lack thereof): the MC seems to get over things a bit too quickly.  In fairness this may be due to time skips.  An event from last chapter that feels recent to me may have been several days ago.  Still, I think this could have been done better. (Somewhat major spoiler follows)
    Specifically the MCs mentor.  I realize he wasn't as close as, say, family, but it still feels like he's forgotten about too quickly.
    Resolution of events: it sometimes felt like a conflict is suddenly gone after a short paragraph.  I'm not sure exactly how to describe this, but I think when reading this you may find yourself thinking "wait that's it? Everything is resolved now? That was fast".  Again, not necessarily a realism issue but more of a style one, I think.
    MCs personality (minor inconsistency in one scene.  Relatively minor spoiler follows)
    Mc fights back against outlaws in the beginning and then again l
  • TatletotRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    Overall: When I read this the first time I got really excited that I had found such a good book. After all, I'm a reader first. Then, my author's reaction kicked in. I was supposed to compare to this? This book is a tough act to follow. As time went on from my initial read I tried to convince myself that something free couldn't possibly be this good. And then the next update came out and I was reminded that that notion was very very wrong. So if you take one thing away from this review, it should be that you'll be amazed at the quality time and time again. When I tell my friends about this site, this is one of the books I recommend.
    Styel: Pacing is good and clearly got me hooked. While the world building is there, I would always love to know more (probably a good thing because I needed to find somewhere to take off half a star).
    Grammar: Probably has some mistakes. But this is free and very readable, if there were any mistakes they didn't detract enough from the reading expirience for me to care. Why take off points?
    Story: I love stories centered around magic academies and the like. Does use the same old mystery plus magic trope, but there's a reason this could probably be a whole genre, and it's not like I'm not enjoying it. Magic system isn't fully fleshed out yet, but being that Vance (MC) is learning too, I can't really fault that at all. Besides, we're still in the early days, if we knew everything it wouldn't be a good story.
    Characters: the main character is very enjoyable, as well as his brother who is fully fleshed out. Some characters suffer from being plugged into a hole so far, but I can't seem to care enough about that to remove more than a half a star.
    All in all, a very enjoyable read and I'm excited for more!
  • obranRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    Currently one of my favorite fictions on Royal Road.
    While it isn't litrpg or gamelit or Isaeki there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.  Pure fantasy is great too.  Hell, I'll be the first to admit that I've fallen too far down the typical Royalroad fare rabbit hole and this is a welcome change.
    Summary-wise, this is a story about a blind kid who wants to learn magic.  Unfortunately, magic in this world is mostly practiced with a visual component.  A passing mage gives him a tool (hopefully when Verne eventually graduates he pays this kindness forward) and tells him to try and sense magic and the MC spends the next 2 years trying to do just that.
    Would be interested in discovering if it is possible to sense magic with other senses.  Can you taste magic?  Smell magic?  Hear magic?  If someone has synesthesia how does this affect the practise of casting spells?
    Anyway, really fun story.  Look forward to it appearing on my Follow List and wish that there was a Patreon with a few extra chapters.
  • pladRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    As the title implies, this novel heavily focuses on the MC's magic.
    The magic system is predicated on skill in imagery/shaping and power of will, and one can become stronger by improving these abilities or using them to form 'cores'.
    As of now the MC is immature, but has a good personality and is working to improve himself both in magic ability and character.
  • shazamguyRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    I must say, after so much of the stories on this site being some variation of the entire world against the protag, on a scale from just the nobles to literally existence itself. It's really refreshing to have a story with people acting just nice. Not even like overly nice, just not massive jackasses all the time. It's like that old quote, "Let there be monsters and cataclysms, but let there be heroes to fight them. Above all, let there be hope." And this story just hits the hope part spot on
  • skralnRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    Well written and edited, the characters are distinct and the few characters that fall into tropes are dealt with by the society they live in. I enjoyed this story a lot and I hope he comes back to it although I understand that the desire to write is akin to shuffling a deck of bent cards that yell at you. 5/5 I followed.
  • Akelly9065Royal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    It is an interesting story, with a interesting beginning. And it really does seem to be only the beginning so far.
    It just gets more and more interesting with a bit of mystery but mostly an exploration of a unique perspective.
    Can't wait to read more. And I haven't seen any grammer mistakes.
  • Endless_calmRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    MC appeals to me. He's introspective but doesn't become a resentful edgelord because of all the advantages that he never had. The side characters are awesome and have their own personalities, which makes the world feel more real. Planning on re-reading soon for a better view, I just binged all of this today.