4 stars. Pretty good progression fantasy with the right elements.
I listened to the first five books of the series called Path of Ascension – 1, 2, 3, 3.5 and 4.
The series contains a unique type of magic system called, drumroll, the Path of Ascension (or just The Path). The Path is like a special worldwide competition that has some qualifying criteria. Primarily, you have to reach certain levels by certain ages. So you have to reach level 5 by age 21, and level 10 by age 39, etc. You also can’t have outside influence like special gifts or help. If you stick to these rules, you get special privileges out in the world (like, no one can harm you without severe consequences), discounts, rewards for reaching certain levels, etc.
I don’t know how all of this is monitored (AI, apparently). If there are a million people entering a competition around a universe, how can you tell if someone cheats? How can you tell that they didn’t get a special gift from a high-level relative? A small gift is ok but a big gift is not? Where’s the line? It sounds like a nightmare to monitor.
The books also feature a lot of mock fighting. A lot. I don’t know if there was ever a fight that the main characters got into that had real consequences. And so, during these mock battles where millions of students fought against each other, you had hundreds of thousands of high-level healers watching these students fighting to ensure nobody really gets hurt.
Again, seems impossible to monitor. People must die during these training events since there are just so many participants and only so many healers monitoring a wide area.
Not to mention that the kingdom is spending all these resources (mana potions, skill shards, etc etc etc) on students who are practicing fighting. It’s really hard to fathom the scale of the people and expenses. The system in this book is so expensive (from a resources perspective) that the author of the book doesn’t even mention it.
The good parts of the book involve the development of the main two characters, going from opposite ends of the spectrum – an orphan and a royal – and finding their way in the world together.
The book contains many of the elements I tend to like in this type of book:
- It’s an easy read
- Relatively well written
- The MC was an orphan, born with a magic power that appears to be flawed
- Rejected by traditional guilds because of his flawed power
- Is able to find a talent that strangely counteracts his flaw
- Becomes overpowered
- Quickly meets a girl to form a team with
- Gets a bonded pet that is not annoying (an incredible feat)
- Characters I care about
- Able to buy 70+ hours of audio book for a single credit
- Avoids many of the common tropes like whining, lacking self confidence, weak
- The MC sometimes loses fights (or loses his arm in the course of battle)
Things that took away from it:
- Sometimes the MC spends a long time (ie: many minutes of my life) “thinking about the options”: if I do this, then perhaps this would happen. But if I do that, then perhaps that would happen. He doesn’t come to a conclusion and a few chapters later he continues to think about the options.
- The magic system is getting a bit complex. Sometimes it feels like a spreadsheet is being read to me.
- There’s a lack of an antagonist so far. The lack of a single powerful bad guy who our heroes will eventually have to confront. For now, they are just trying to practice, train and level.
- In a few of the five books (book 2 through 3.5), there is no leveling. Feels very stagnant for the fantasy progression genre.
- Of course, in book 4, the author has to do a lot of time skipping to justify the levels they need to gain. “For the next 10 months, they did this.” “For three months, they did this task at least five times per day.”
- All books of this type contain a lot of fighting as the primary mode to progress, but this book also includes descriptions of fights the main characters are watching (from a distance!) and not actually a part of and don’t have any impact on the story at all…
- There’s a political element of royals fighting with each other to try to raise their standing between each other – so boring
This also has touches of romance in it. Just really small touches, but it’s welcome. I won’t spoil it. But the book doesn’t immediately go where I expected it to go, and I’m kind of good with that. It’ll likely get there eventually, but I’m ok with it being a super slow burn.
One criticism that I read online is that the MC gains 5 levels in the first book, no levels in the second book, no levels in the third book, and 4 levels in the fourth book. It’s a fair criticism, I feel, that a long time can pass with no measurable progress and then suddenly the MC passes two levels in a couple of chapters to advance the story a bit.
Well, I read the whole set of books in this value pack. I do care about the characters, so it was good that they did some levelling in Book 4. But many people consider Book 4 to be filler, with not much happening other than the characters levelling over the course of years.
Not sure if I’ll read book 5, but I’ll put this on the maybe pile.
