Magium: The Mage Tournament

by Chris Michael Wilson

Barry is an ordinary guy, with no magical powers whatsoever, who dreamed of becoming a mage for the better part of his life. After dedicating his whole life to studying magic, in the hopes of fulfilling his dream, he finally finds a way to do it.

However, in order to become a mage, he must first win a deadly free-for-all tournament against the most powerful mages in the world.

The fantasy world that the story takes place in is inspired by Dungeons and Dragons and by The Lord of the Rings.

The story of Magium starts at the beginning of the tournament, right after Barry and all the other participants are transported to the continent where the contest is taking place.

The tournament takes place on a continent hidden from the rest of the world, where there are mythical creatures like dragons and hydras, but also remnants of an old and technologically advanced civilization, whose magically powered devices are still being used in the present day.

As the series progresses, Barry will meet with other participants, he will make friends and enemies, and he will gradually find out more about the continent he is on, and its inhabitants. He will find out that a person called "The Creator" had established several utopias in this place, six hundred years ago, where animals and humans lived in harmony, and food was created through magic. What Barry will get to see through his travels, however, is the downfall of these utopias, some of them being on the brink of destruction. As he begins to get involved with the people of this land, Barry will need to decide if he can simply ignore what is happening before his eyes, or if he will intervene, at the risk of being banned from the tournament, and forfeiting his dream.

Credits for the magic ball image on the cover go to Agnes Landgraf.

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Fiction, Choose Your Own Adventure, Epic, Magic, Epic Fantasy

379 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 26, 2017

Reviews

[Anushka Sierra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Check out my other reviews at Feminist Quill>

The rather unimaginatively named Barry, an average guy with absolutely no special abilities, skill or training, wants to become a Mage. Since Mages are born, not made, this poses a particularly difficult problem for Barry. He thinks he has found a solution - compete in a Mage tournament whose ultimate prize is the rather unimaginatively named "Magium", a substance fabled to hold untold power, and which just may get Barry the magical powers he does not have. 

[Note: This book is an adaptation of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and I imagine, has suffered greatly in the translation of it from one genre to the other.]

Now, if Barry strikes you as no more that yet another desperate Harry Potter fan who spent too many years waiting for their Hogwarts letter, I wouldn't be quick to blame you. Unfortunately for the reader, the story doesn't get much better from here. 

Everything about this book is dismal and immature. It reminds of Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle -- in a bad way. Eragon and its sequels were childishly gleeful in their world-building, but at least there was depth and consistency to it. Magium on the other hand has taken every fantasy prompt and keyword to exist and run with all of them. 

It begins with a Hunger Games-esque scenario. The Mage Tournament has begun, but the objectives of the tournament have not been announced. Those awaiting these objectives with bated breath will be sorely disappointed, as at the end of the book, the objectives have still not been announced. Forgetting about plotlines and wandering vaguely away is a characteristic of this book, and the objectives are not the only aspect of the story that suffer in this fashion. 

Since they have nothing better to do, the mages have decided to while time away by thinning the competition. Barry walks into one such battle, and recognizes that the mage currently having his ass handed to him is Daren, the Legendary Savior of the Eastern Continent." Having no skills, Barry hides among the trees. However, the winner of the fight senses his aura, sees that he has no magical ability, and... promptly assumes him to be a superior kind of mage called a stillwater. Because normal humans wouldn't be dumb enough to enter the tournament. (They say this, but then the gang meets plenty of ordinary humans out to murder mages later in the book. See my point about wandering storylines above.) The winner of the fight is then afraid of Barry, even though he hasn't even seen him, and even though he just defeated the "Legendary Savior of the Eastern Continent". So he... runs away. 

The book is filled with just super convenient plot devices. It's like the author asked himself what would make things easiest for Barry, and then wrote them into the story.  

In what I'm sure is hardly unfortunate coincidence, this book also contains some hard to mask sexist overtones, starting with the idea that women can't be born mages for no apparent reason. This doesn't mean that the book lacks in female magic users, it just means all those women (4 have already appeared in significant roles by the end of the book) are constantly mistaken for banshees and continuously attacked by all the "real" male mages. 

And that neatly leads to the above mentioned lack of consistency. The book starts with the premise that women can't be mages. It then immediately introduces a beautiful female mage named Kate. Daren concludes that she should be Purified so that the banshee possessing her may be cast out. She denies being a banshee, and Barry believes her. He senses that her aura is different from that of a banshee. Now, Darren is a wildly experienced and famous mage, whose "white" magic is practically best suited for purification of a banshee. (Book's words, not mine.) His title is "Legendary savior of the Eastern Continent." Get that? A whole continent. And yet he has never met a banshee, and therefore cannot differentiate between the aura of a female mage and a banshee. 

This leads to Daren being suspicious of Kate and threatening to kill her for the rest of the book, even as they all continue together on their quest. 

A little further along, we meet Rose, another beautiful woman. Rose is later revealed to be a Time Weaver -- still not a mage though, so this doesn't break the rule that women can't be born mages. By this point, I was throwing my hands up in confusion, and berating myself for reading unknown fantasy books from the internet. (Thanks, Kindle Unlimited).

The book also features talking animals, goblins, ogres, giants, dwarves, necromancers, healers, nobles, slaves, and common people. All these factions are introduced and made to interact with each other in the most boring ways. There is no finesse to the writing, it's incredibly cheesy and naive, and did I already say boring? 

You kind of get the sense of reading through someone's first outline for a book. A rough draft that would have benefited from developmental writing, and maybe an exhortation for the author to stop self-inserting at every turn. Yes, this book without doubt belongs to the Mary-Sue genre of writing (or should I say Barry-Chris?). It attempts to imitate the towering might of fantasy writing without understanding the concepts of either fantasy or writing. 

And while all the books problems don't begin and end with 'Barry', he does make up a majority of them. He portrays himself as absolutely nothing special and proceeds to get by through sheer luck and taking credit for other peoples' work. Nor does his lack of magical ability prevent him from using magic. He owns something called a "stat device" - introduced as a "fortune teller's trinket", which literally powers up his stats. (This book makes a lot more sense if you try to think of it as a trite video game). Interestingly, the stat device has only those stats which are most convenient to any given part of the plot. (Ancient Languages two pages before they run into talking animals, anyone?) 

In all the continents on this misbegotten world, Barry is apparently the only person who has figured out that the stat device may be useful if a lot of mages are gathered together, emitting "magical energy" that the device can absorb, and in turn, pass on to him. However, he is also referred to as a "Stat Device User", which is apparently an accepted form of magic user (still not a mage though).

At this point in the book, it really doesn't matter who is a mage and who isn't, and yet its central premise is still about it. Speaking of the central premise, there is barely any progress made towards this -- the merry band of misfits just move from one dangerous situation to another, carried haplessly along on the waves of chance, and inevitably winning by sheer luck. 

The treatment of its female characters sort of seals this book for me. It isn't that they are treated badly as much as it is about the Other-ing of women as unknowable, enigmatic entities who all have to play the role of love interest to the Barry of the book. They are all beautiful because how else can they exist in these dual roles. Numerous characters also devote considerable time to nudge-nudge-wink-winking Barry about his allegedly deep relationships with these women. This is also the only way in which we find out that his relationships with these women has any depth at all - there's nothing in the writing to imply it. The author simply does not know how to write, and the book comes off as incredibly inorganic, and something you would typically expect to find (and skip past) on Wattpad. 

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked the story even though i liked the "choose-your-own-path" version much more :) You can explore different sides of this story and learn a littbe bit more about the individual characters and their storys.
The story is about a young man, without magical powers, who enters the tournament, where the greatest mage's of his time fight compete against each other to win the "Magium".
Barry, the main character, was born without any magical abilities but his dream is to become a mage and he hopes that he can achieve this with the "Magium".
Barry is a great, sarcastic and smart character and it's very interesting to follow his story.
I also really like Kate and Rose Poor Rose :( She died in my version..., Daren: i'm not quite sure, but Flower and Petal are awesome :)

I can't wait to see what will happen in the 2nd book. :)

[Boris Drew · Rating 2 out of 5]

DISCLAIMER: I read this book in the original app format, so my experience may be slightly different from the text-only version.

Frankly, it has been a while since I have read a book this bland. Magium takes all the elements of a poorly written Dungeons and Dragons campaign, minus all the fun parts. The action moves at an illogical, breakneck pace that gives you the feeling you’re reading retellings of tabletop boss encounters. The party is thrown together with lousy explanations as to why they are cooperating. And the world is a series of extremely dull fantasy tropes.

This would not have been such an issue if the story had kept the humorous air it opens with. But it doesn’t. It expects you to take it seriously, which is nearly impossible when the premise is so ridiculous to begin with. Magium could have been quite a hilarious choose-your-own-adventure, but alas, it was not meant to be so. I will admit that I got a few laughs out of certain segments, but those were few and far between and diminished as the story progressed.

The only saving grace in this whole mess is the choice system, which is missing from this book version. If you choose to read the app (which is free, by the way), you will be presented with choices that will slightly alter your path through the story. Most of the time these choices hardly mattered and only presented minor dialogue changes. At most they were “instant death” buttons akin to the worst parts of the old King’s Quest titles.

So if you for some reason have time to burn on this fantasy novel, please do yourself a favor and read the app and not the paperback. Otherwise, you’re removing the one remotely interesting element this series has to offer.

[Sugarpop · Rating 3 out of 5]

I played through the game's first book multiple times to get the achievements and then decided to read the book too.

This is basically a playthrough of the game's Book 1 with choices made for you. I like that the book does not take the overly heroic approach to Barry's character nor does it choose to be an asshole, instead choosing a good middle.

The writing style feels a bit too simple for a book that keeps flowing while it enhances the game experience which feeds you the scenes bit by bit.

Still an entertaining story, no matter the form you consume it in.

[Gustavo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find it fascinating that there's a choose your own adventure game that was quantum collapsed to form the core of this book. It was then differently fleshed out and it was quite an enjoyable read.

While not perfect, this book worked for me more as a comedy with a lot of fantasy/sci-fi in it than a pure breed fantasy book. This way of reading it made the characters really interesting in the way they interacted.

[Zohaib Ahmed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I being a fiction writer myself, loved this book. I loved the book so much that I have ordered a paperback which costed me around 4.5k of my currency and if I can pay that much for a book, imagine how awesome can it be. Great character development and story is always keeping you up on heels. Never have I ever picked a better story. I wish I can meet the great writer behind this story.

[Samir Majhi · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read in a long time. I keep waiting for the next chapter.

[Dustin Smerdon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this story!

[TheReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good!

[Ashwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exciting from the get go.

[Izzy Fernandez]

awesomeness *-*

[Pavel Kolev · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite dissapointing. The narative was pretty bad. Most of the conversations got the reaction "well that escalated quickly". The story continuously introduced new and more powerful creatures and a big portion of the characters are "unique" and have powers that should not be possible. It would probably be ok for a RPG game script. The desicion making was horrible as well. Not at once I felt that my choices meant something.

[Michael w Hall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favourite

It's RPG lite. The MC is on the weak side. The characters are mostly forgettable . Read this if nothing else is available

[Adam Bengston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply a wonderful throwback to the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books I enjoyed in my earliest days of reading fiction. Yet, this particular work provides a modern twist by fusing this older genre with elements of Tabletop Roleplaying Games that are still thriving in both their original forms and also adaptations such as how I experienced Magium as a text-based RPG narrative where one character narrates yet the reader/player comes across choices for this character that not only determine how the story unfolds, but through adding a stat feature to level up this characters abilities and set of skills, you also decide what areas this player character is strong and/or weak in. This also determines the Choose Your Own Adventure aspect as well, for example you choose a particular action from a short list of options, and if that choice requires speed but you didnt previously invest your current number of stat points in the speed category, the choice could "fail" ending in consequences as dire as the narrator's death, which means "Game Over" or "The End" for the story, that has no "Happily Ever After."
The unique and creative fusion of RPGs and traditional written narrative aside, Magium does not sacrifice the latter in its merging with the former. The characters are dynamic and extremely well written, with a very complex and captivating plot no matter how many different ways it can unfold due to the numerous paths it can take due to the reader having an active role in how events unfold as well as whether certain main supporting characters are even introduced much less how the chemistry develops and evolves and even how long they remain with the main character and narrator.
Magium, though not the first or last of its kind as this new genre has now a vast library from its popularity and success mainly due to how easily accessible they are, being a simple download away as an app found in whatever app store your smartphone uses. And most are totally free or at least the first installment/chapter/book as in Magium's case are called in the three parts that exist. And with Magium, you can even get around having to purchase the next books through an achievement system that if you earn a certain number in a single book, the next book is automatically unlocked free of charge.
Now to end this grotesquely long, wordy review in one brief phrase, "An Innovative Immersive Work Of Fantasy Literature."

[Fra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything begin with an application called Magium on Play Store that caught my attention. It is a choose your own adventure kind.
I read it.
I complete it.
I fell in love with it.
Then I've found out that there is also the paperback version of it.
I bought it.
I read it.
I fell in love with it, again.

I like the way it's written: simple, clean, understandable.
The story is fascinating, especially the end where happens something unexpected.
The only two thing that I quite have to criticize are spoilers, about two character: I feel like Daren is quite stupid and not so legendary like they tell. Maybe Cutthroat Dave was right about him? Daren is not so wise like he had traveled all around the world like he said. And since he is a white mage I thought he would have a lot of knowledge about banshees but it seems I was wrong.
After that I didn't appreciate how Rose behaves after the noble episode. Her lecherous behavior with Berry. But this is mainly just an opinion of mine.
Anyway this is a good book for everyone that likes fantasy. And if you want to get more in touch with characters or just vary a bit the plot you can do it playing the choose your own adventure version that you can find on Play Store. Actually the only bad thing about the book is that you lose all of this varying thing. But it's great having it in paperback version with the original story thought by the author!

[Lurino · Rating 3 out of 5]

The magical power of convenience

Being an adaptation of a Choose Your Own Adventure story, the book was enjoyable. As a promotional material, it does help in making me want to play the game just to do better than the main character. That said, this isn’t a particularly rich story, though the lore and worldbuilding was definitely there, and the story was marred by the main characters’ superpower of convenience and plot devices.

[Slav Ivanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book felt like reading a Dungeons and Dragons adventure. It was interesting and I cared about the characters. Although towards the end, I started to lose interest. Haven't decided if I'm going to continue with book 2.

[Lotta · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're in it to read really good literature, this is not the book for you. However, it is a really good choose your own story app, so therefore it's a five star for me. World and character building is insane good, not to mention your choices actually matters.

[Hugo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply amazing, had so much fun reading the CYOA but i know the book is just as good.

[Rhea Milner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yep. It's fun. I love Barry. The dynamic between the group is amazing. I love this! Would recommend this book to anyone who would want a fun read.

[Bibliophillic1997 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want a paper bag format of these two books ..can any one give me link for it

[Brittnee Beal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love

I think the book is very well written. I even laughed at some of the interactions between characters.
Would definitely recommend the book and the game.

[Lace · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty good, except a bit generic at times.

[EBookLover · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well worked out, excellent world, excellent story, excellent characters. The playable/choices version makes it even more interesting.

[Clio H · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you enjoyed the game,you'll definitely enjoy the book. Its like the FNAF movie case, where it's cater toward the fans of the franchise more than the critics.

[George Costa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn't put it down

[Isaque Caixeta · Rating 5 out of 5]

top 3 livros da minha vida

[Lawmi · Rating 4 out of 5]

as a book: meh
as a choose-your-own-adventure-app: very good
choices actually matters and there is great world building with interesting characters with depth

[DevicsPrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wouldn't call this book brilliant but it was quite fun to read. It got me into reading again so it holds a special place in my heart. Another thing this book does well is the overpowered character trope. There is a lot of moral quandaries and mystery surrounding the character that I enjoy immensely. The character isn't pompous and doesn't try to stand out in the story. The prose is the weakest part and the dialogue could use a bit of work. The plot is good though and stays interesting throughout.

Looking forward to what the author has to offer in the future. There is a lot of potential here.

[Diego Lucas jiménez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elige tu propia aventura, libro gratis. La calidad no es estelar, pero es GRATIS y está muy bien. Historia original, hace aguas por algunas partes pero bueno, es entretenido y engancha, que es lo importante