Thomas was no one, an orphan with no past and no memories of his early life. The only clue lies in the strange birthmark on his chest, a mark that may or may not reveal his origin, but will certainly guide him to his destiny.
Growing to manhood he will become a man of consequence and influence, yet the greatest gift he has to offer his people lies not in his power, but in his wisdom. As he strives to reach his potential he will face obstacles great and small and he will discover that some foes are too strong to defeat with power alone.
The greatest of evils can only be stopped when those true of heart are willing to sacrifice blood, tears, and sometimes—their lives.
Michael Manning was born in Cleveland, Texas and spent his formative years there, reading fantasy and science fiction, concocting home grown experiments in his backyard, and generally avoiding schoolwork.
Eventually he went to college, starting at Sam Houston State University, where his love of beer blossomed and his obsession with playing role-playing games led him to what he calls 'his best year ever' and what most of his family calls 'the lost year'.
Several years and a few crappy jobs later, he decided to pursue college again and was somehow accepted into the University of Houston Honors program (we won't get into the particulars of that miracle). This led to a degree in pharmacy and it followed from there that he wound up with a license to practice said profession.
Unfortunately, Michael was not a very good pharmacist. Being relatively lawless and free spirited were not particularly good traits to possess in a career focused on perfection, patient safety, and the letter-of-the-law. Nevertheless, he persisted and after a stint as a hospital pharmacy manager wound up as a pharmacist working in correctional managed care for the State of Texas.
He gave drugs to prisoners.
After a year or two at UTMB he became bored and taught himself entirely too much about networking, programming, and database design and administration. At first his supervisors warned him (repeatedly) to do his assigned tasks and stop designing programs to help his coworkers do theirs, but eventually they gave up and just let him do whatever he liked since it seemed to be generally working out well for them.
Ten or eleven years later and he got bored with that too. So he wrote a book. We won't talk about where he was when he wrote 'The Blacksmith's Son', but let's just assume he was probably supposed to be doing something else at the time.
Some people liked the book and told other people. Now they won't leave him alone.
After another year or two, he decided to just give up and stop pretending to be a pharmacist/programmer, much to the chagrin of his mother (who had only ever wanted him to grow up to be a doctor and had finally become content with the fact that he had settled on pharmacy instead).
Michael's wife supported his decision, even as she stubbornly refused to believe he would make any money at it. It turned out later that she was just telling him this because she knew that nothing made Michael more contrary than his never ending desire to prove her wrong. Once he was able to prove said fact she promptly admitted her tricky ruse and he has since given up on trying to win.
Today he lives at home with his stubborn wife, teenage twins, a giant moose-poodle, two yorkies, a green-cheeked conure, a massive prehistoric tortoise, and a head full of imaginary people. There are also some fish, but he refuses to talk about them.
As all good books do. I read through this in one go, for a shorter book it certainly did not lack for action, nor depth. Nicely developed characters that I quickly attached to, which doesn't always happen with this author. I would love to see more stories like this. Keep up the good work.
I have been a fan of Michael's work from the first time I read the blacksmiths son. After hearing about this from his Facebook page I knew I had to see what his first work was like and as always I laughed and felt as if I was part of the characters life. Can't wait to see if this becomes a new set or when his next working hits my kindle.
I'm always keen to give self-published authors a spin, and at a glance Thomas by Michael G Manning seemed like the kind of book I could get behind, but it became increasingly clear as I progressed that this novel was desperately in need of serious structural edits, not to mention a fair amount of copy editing to clear up issues such as chronic head-hopping and far too many other gremlins.
Look, this is not a bad little story. I never quite did feel as if I wanted to throw my iPad across the room, but it could have been so much stronger. I gained the impression, while I read, that this was based on someone's RPG campaign, which in itself wouldn't be awful if it weren't for the fact that two of secondary characters could easily have been excised from the novel without harming the story at all.
A big killer for me was the characterisation, especially of the female characters, who couldn't seem to have a conversation about anything else other than men. And one individual in particular. [sigh] Pacing was a big problem as well, and important narrative milestones were missing or muddled, not to forget the the typecasting of human = good, orcs = bad. I suppose this wouldn't bother younger readers, but as a seasoned reader of fantasy I wanted more.
At its heart this is a sweet story; perhaps a little too sentimental for my tastes, so I suppose the fault lies with the reader, not the author. If you're interested in a messiah-style tale where an orphan-turned-cleric is charged with saving the world, then this one may blow your hair back. This was a not-quite-hitting-the-mark for me, unfortunately.
This relatively short novel focuses on a small number of characters, in addition to Thomas, the protagonist. I found Thomas' later choices inconsistent with his origins as an orphan living on the street. Thus my belief in the story's realism suffered as the story progressed.
The ending opened up an interesting glimpse into the world of the gods, but it came too late for me to praise the book's world-building. In short, I feel the book requires a rewrite to stitch the narrative together in a more satisfying way.
Basic Details: Book Title: Thomas Subtitle: Author: Michael G. Manning Genre: Fantasy Part of a series? No Order in series: Best read after earlier books in series? Available: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... Overall score: I scored this book 5/5 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Short Summary of the book: Meet Thomas, an extraordinary young orphan, living on the streets but still retaining compassion with others. Within the first chapters, he saves a kitten and strikes up a friendship with an orphan girl, Sarah. Thomas meets a priest in a tavern and saves him when he is attacked in an alley. From thereon Thomas’ life changes as he is taken in at the temple. As he grows up, his responsibilities change and he becomes important within the temple. But with responsibilities comes sacrifice too. An interesting twist towards the end of the book leaves you wishing to know more. What I liked about the book: I loved the book and was sorry to have finished it. What is happening next? What I didn’t like about the book: There wasn’t anything to dislike about the book. My favourite bits in the book: Where Thomas stood up for the rights of others. My least favourite bits in the book: I loved the book in its entirety. Any further books in the series? Any more planned by this author? The author has written several other books but Thomas is a stand-alone novel. What books could this be compared to and why? I’m not sure what book to compare Thomas to. Thomas fits in well with many other books in the fantasy range, containing magic, love, compassion, theology, mystique. Recommendation: In summary, I would recommend this book for the following readers:
Children No Young Adult Probably Adult Yes
If you like Fantasy, this book may be the book for you.
I look forward to reading more books by this author. Book Description by Author: Thomas was no one, an orphan with no past and no memories of his early life. The only clue lies in the strange birthmark on his chest, a mark that may or may not reveal his origin, but will certainly guide him to his destiny.
Growing to manhood he will become a man of consequence and influence, yet the greatest gift he has to offer his people lies not in his power, but in his wisdom. As he strives to reach his potential he will face obstacles great and small and he will discover that some foes are too strong to defeat with power alone.
The greatest of evils can only be stopped when those true of heart are willing to sacrifice blood, tears, and sometimes—their lives. About the Author: Michael Manning was born in Cleveland, Texas and spent his formative years there, reading fantasy and science fiction, concocting home grown experiments in his backyard, and generally avoiding schoolwork.
Eventually he went to college, starting at Sam Houston State University, where his love of beer blossomed and his obsession with playing role-playing games led him to what he calls 'his best year ever' and what most of his family calls 'the lost year'.
Several years and a few crappy jobs later, he decided to pursue college again and was somehow accepted into the University of Houston Honors program (we won't get into the particulars of that miracle). This led to a degree in pharmacy and it followed from there that he wound up with a license to practice said profession.
Unfortunately, Michael was not a very good pharmacist. Being relatively lawless and free spirited were not particularly good traits to possess in a career focused on perfection, patient safety, and the letter-of-the-law. Nevertheless, he persisted and after a stint as a hospital pharmacy manager wound up as a pharmacist working in correctional managed care for the State of Texas.
He gave drugs to prisoners.
After a year or two at UTMB he became bored and taught himself entirely too much about networking, programming, and database design and administration. At first his supervisors warned him (repeatedly) to do his assigned tasks and stop designing programs to help his coworkers do theirs, but eventually they gave up and just let him do whatever he liked since it seemed to be generally working out well for them.
Ten or eleven years later and he got bored with that too. So he wrote a book. We won't talk about where he was when he wrote 'The Blacksmith's Son', but let's just assume he was probably supposed to be doing something else at the time.
Some people liked the book and told other people. Now they won't leave him alone.
After another year or two, he decided to just give up and stop pretending to be a pharmacist/programmer, much to the chagrin of his mother (who had only ever wanted him to grow up to be a doctor and had finally become content with the fact that he had settled on pharmacy instead).
Michael's wife supported his decision, even as she stubbornly refused to believe he would make any money at it. It turned out later that she was just telling him this because she knew that nothing made Michael more contrary than his never ending desire to prove her wrong. Once he was able to prove said fact she promptly admitted her tricky ruse and he has since given up on trying to win.
Today he lives at home with his stubborn wife, teenage twins, a giant moose-poodle, two yorkies, a green-cheeked conure, a massive prehistoric tortoise, and a head full of imaginary people. There are also some fish, but he refuses to talk about them.
Thomas is an early writing by Michael Manning and it shows in the lack of attention to details in the plotting, pacing and characterization but it is still a nice YA fantasy story. It has the popular tropes of a YA fantasy with an orphan child with a mysterious past being blessed with a special gift and learning and training to fulfill a preordained, life threatening destiny and it ends nicely for everyone.
OK book but least favorite of Michael g manning. This seemed entirely D&D and not what I was expecting. It could possibly become an interesting series with better future novels??? The Nook app download was full of missing words, lines, spelling errors, misprints, and was by far the worst ebook download translation. Every page was full of errors. 😔
Starts pretty good, especially with the early character development of Thomas. However, from there it's just down hill. Really the book feels like it was written based of a D&D campaign the author played.
It has potential, but I felt like it was the bare bones of the story. It lacked depth, just the basic outline of the story. I understand soft world-building, but you still need to give the reader enough for them to have a grasp to fill in the gaps. Studio Ghibli and the first few Harry Potter books do soft world-building well, they give you enough to draw you in, but not so much that everything is defined. This gave you a skeleton, it sparked interest but didn't draw you in. I should be able to accept what happens in the world-building and not go "wait, what? I'm confused, this is supposed to make sense but I have zero grounds to understand or blindly accept what's going on?"
I felt distanced from the story and characters. Character development was there, but just enough so you know the basics about them, but nothing to really see them as deeper characters and with deeper relationships. There wasn't a lot of interaction between characters, it was a lot of reflection on past reactions or interactions.
I just needed more. I felt it was going here is the basic story idea that I have what do you think? I would have probably really liked it, if I had more.
A fantastic tale of magic, self sacrifice, love and friendship, a orphan Thomas living on the streets comes across a priest being assaulted, he comes across his magic for the first time when his dagger glows and scares of the tugs, when priest recognises the birthmark on his chest in the shape of the Sun Goddess, Taken to the temple were he will learn and study, Thomas will meet loads of new freinds(girls) and not so good, when being owned by a Goddess may have its perks, but will he be able to sacrifice himself for the Sun Goddess when she is in great peril and save her, an absolute magical read, as we watch the mc grow in confidence with his magic abilities, lots of blood curdling deaths, big bad orcs and the Prince of Hell makes a visit, I really love the characters, especially the Dwarf with his humour, the narration by Alex Wyndham is just perfect, highly recommend.....😁
I am a very big Manning fan, having flown through the Mageborn series in less than two weeks. I'm presently making my way through both the sequel to the Mageborn series, as well as the prequel series, Line of the Illenial. I took a quick break from both to read this standalone novel. I had high hopes given Manning's other works; I was excited for a stand alone novel. The novel started out well, but it felt detached, and lacked the depth that we have come to expect from his other novels. While the "gods" in the Mageborn series are not deities, but rather powerful wizards, this book seemed to portray them as God v the Devil, which caused me to lose interest.
I really enjoyed this book because it wasn't something that fits a lot of the molds that fantasy books fit. There was small amount of action and drama but the characters really took center stage and it ended up being a very touching book. The relationships and the godlike entities were very different from most fantasies I've read and that was certainly another plus for me. I would highly recommend if you wanted to try something different.
This was my walking book. It was short as a relief from the longer books I had been listening to. Unfortunately, winter hit and my IT band strain got worse so no walking. Anyway, this was a good high fantasy stand alone. Then ending seemed rushed and they didn't know how to end it, it felt like they knew the ending, but not the execution. It was still good and didn't come out of left field. I recommend, it was enjoyable not too dense and just all together a really good story.
Dear Michael, another entertaining and interesting story. I enjoyed reading this book and found the plot line very interesting and imaginative. Your imagination and creativity is wonderful and your characters outstanding. I highly recommend reading this book to anyone interested in reading an excellent story. Thanks for the entertainment and enjoyable experience.
I think this is my first review for this author that wasn't 5 stars. I mean it was good it just lacked usual depth- probably just because it was shorter, but either way just not as effective and emotional as his usually great books
Beautiful story very well written A nice twist on a templars/priest tale Simply and gently told with empathy And kindness of the characters Recommend for a holiday read
I am a fan of Michael, having read many of his books. However, this one, while not badly written, felt a bit simplistic. It lacked the depth of his earlier novels. So, in sum, it’s not bad, but not to the usual standard.
Wow! Yet again Mr. Manning draws us into a new world filled with amazing characters and twists! One can only hope to hear more from Thomas and his friends! Well done, sir!
Good stand alone novel by Manning. Still in the same genre as the mage born series, but in no way affiliated with it. Small content than normal Manning works but worth the buy.
I'm a professed fan girl. This kept me up until 1am. I could. not. stop. reading. No idea if Manning plans to expand upon this story but so worth the read.
Great story, as I have come to expect from Manning. The relationships are much like his Illeniel series which is a good thing. Wonder if there will be a second one