A Travelling Mage's Almanac

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Yenna Bookbinder loves learning magic. As a teacher of the Arcane, she has helped countless students to become mages—yet the world outside her classroom beckons to her.

When a band of adventurers comes through town as part of a grand expedition to parts unknown, she finds herself offered a position on the crew as the party’s mage. Leaving behind her old life for exciting days on the road, Yenna travels with new allies to uncover all manner of magical mysteries.

Between uneasy alliances, ancient dark magic and a plot that threatens to swallow the expedition whole, Yenna Bookbinder’s discoveries may shape the future of magic irrevocably—but will she live to see her findings published?

My first serious attempt at a novel! Based loosely on a much older work of mine, this has been a story that's been swimming around in my head for a long time. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! A huge shoutout to all my friends who have supported me so much through the writing, editing and panicking processes!

Updates are Monday and Wednesday (~7PM UTC+0) for the foreseeable future.

Cover art by Eneli Dolinšek.

Information

Status: Completed
Year: 2022
Author: Loaka Of The Wind

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.7/ 5.0
Followers: 763
Views: 255,155

Reviews

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

Community Reviews(10)

Aaron Sofaer (aka Pastafarian)Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Loaka's story is an absolute delight. The certivaur main character is charming and an incredible nerd, and the supporting cast is highly entertaining. I'm a big fan of this sort of semi-epistolary style, and the framing works well; and the epigraphs are just absolutely on-point. Ten out of ten half-stars, and I'm looking forward to more!
ErdosRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This is the journey of Yenna, an exploration of recognizable character-arcs and completely unique character identities—reminiscent of those one finds in fables, almost. It is romantic without being Romance, it is introspective and just a tad sentimental.
The chapters are quite meaty. They are decently long, which affords them to contain both descriptions and introspection as well as actual happenings. You can really feel the author's style bring the characters to life. Native English, jocosely written—a delightful adventure shaping up.
You'll have a descriptive characterization of a colourful world, a bashful protagonist leading you through it, and just a jolly-good time overall.
Gabby_SilverRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I am absolutely thrilled with this story. It's got all sorts of aspects that make it an excellent read. It's left me with lots to think about, and I loved how many of the story threads just came together in the end. And even though the main character was a little bit op, she was a delightful level of medel of honor winner op, and not a movie where people walk away from explosions without getting their hair ruffled while stuff goes flying past their heads op. One of the details that really makes the story is that there were no noticable wins that rested all on one character's shoulders. It really goes a long way towards making the characters feel real and believable.
There were some bits that were a little bit hard to get through. But never because of poor writing. They were just kind of... The hard crunchy ness of the pretzels in chocolate covered pretzels. Without it you would have something entirely different.
PennytailRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I know the author personally and I've been reading ahead of what's posted here at the time of this review. And that's saying something, considering I rarely spend my free time reading, even if it's something a friend worked on. A Travelling Mage's Almanac is a story about discovery and growth, and occassionally cool magical things that happen to or because of our protagonist who, despite already possessing significant knowledge of magical studies, finds that there's far more to it than she once thought. I hope all of these elements continue to be present in the foreseeable future. Keep it up, Loaka!
jnobodyRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The magic system is really neat and is explained throughout the book, It's neat and the characters are well done and the cast of characters all have a good time to be learned by the reader.
is good book one of the best ive read on this site and If it wouldnt feel out of place on a cosy corner of a bookshelf. if it wouldnt be so unruly id love to have a physical copy. but uh, 800 pages is alot of pages for a physical book or tome this would be.
anywho good book would reccomend I read it in around a month.
BorkinsRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I have often been asked to read people's works on this site and it's not often that a story grabs me in a way this story has. I was fortunate to read the future chapters and I must say The Travelling Mage's Almanac is an adventure unlike many others. The story introduces a cast of interesting characters that don't feel easliy forgotten, all of whom feel well thought out and necessary to the story. By far where this story excels is how it handles exposition of it's world, we learn about the world from Yenna's view that never feels to dense or would leave the reader frustrated. Enjoy reading this as much as I did, you wont regret it.
TealiciousTeaRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Wonderful worldbuilding and rich description cast an enchanting spell. Lots of magic is going on in dramatic turns that can grip with reader tight. Style and grammar are good. Big, but not too big, paragraphs give lots of detail and meat to the story. Overall a pleasant tale. Most I think shall be charmed by our main character and her earnest ways and growing magical skill.
BestcoasterRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
This book was a joy to read. The world was imaginative and interesting, there was a decently sized but not overlarge cast of characters, and the plot kept moving without either bogging down or skipping over things.
It does have one big flaw though: the ending is rushed. It goes real hard, real fast. A few plot thread and characters get pretty much abandoned. Still, the main flaw there is that 'theres not more of this book', so it's hard to judge it harshly.
DarkTsunderRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
A nice short story. Does a solid job with world building and adding details while still leaving plenty to the imagination.
The format chosen also lends itself very well to having an extremely intelligent character who has spent their entire (undisclosed) life as an academic, while not relying on overly explaining that they are smart. Managing to make it believable that someone is the smartest in the building without harping on it or having to flashback to how they made their 'amazing' plan is not easy. Here, it works without pulling back to other PoVs to make it so. Here, just the internal monologue and what becomes an external monologue gets the point across nicely.
Goes to an interesting place and wraps up the ending nicely as well.
xicsessRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
I'm bumping up the score a bit - it takes a while to get going but it appears that there are dangers, and they are interesting. (ch20ish)
The characters are all unique. The world is well fleshed out. I particularly like the random tidbits at the beginning of the chapter and the footnotes. It really does quite a bit to bring it alive. I'd say if you're a fan of something like harry potter or Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norell that this story would be a pretty good fit. The story as it is essentially is an exposition and delve into magic and the world itself as we quickly travel through it and ponder/experiment with magic as opportunities present themselves.
Now my criticisms are I am personally not all that interested in the exploration of magic for the sake of magic alone. The main character's joy seems to be both learning and teaching - we get quite a bit of that. However, none of that magic is particularly exciting. The most exciting spell thus far was a technique to briefly speed up perception/speed of thought. In a synopsis that includes dark magic and danger - I'm struggling to see how it fits into the story.
If you had pitched this to me as a slice of life, kinda cutesy deal, I would better understand where I'm going. On that same vein of thought; the characters emotionally all seem a bit immature (we giggle and blush-Jin especially-, and prance, and our knees shake in anticipation of having to talk to strangers -yenna-). It lacks the kind of (so far) darkness and danger 'if she survives' vibe that's part of the description of this story.
I'm not sure what 18 chapters in length really means on this but there hasn't been a meaningful fight martial or magic (I'm including the 'duel' in this as well as the 'book' to avoid spoilers). There has been some minor danger (I do like how those scenes were handled). It really feels like I'm reading a kind of victorian esque light drama coupled with a well thought out magical academy series.
I could also perhaps d