The last thing I expected was to gain the spells of the woman in my bed. Hell, I didn't even know magic existed until I'd cast a spell that morning. Then a beautiful teacher from a magical academy told me I could become the universe's most powerful mage.
To get there, I need to become stronger. I need to ace all my examinations. And, most of all, I need to master the most potent spells.
But I have to start somewhere.
This begins my first year at the Mazirian Academy.
I seem to have a problem with the biggest names in the harem fantasy world. Jamie Hawk, Logan Jacobs, Simon Archer. Each one of these authors have tons of series under their belts, and I am not a fan of any of them. I can add Dante King to that list. I don't know what it is. I am not expecting Pulitzer prize quality writing but I do want something believable. That sounds weird when writing about a fantasy harem fantasy. What I mean is that if I put myself in the MCs place, what would I do? If the author does things that I can't imagine anyone doing ever, then I get a little annoyed.
The MC in this story finds out that there is magic in the world and his is a Mage. He find out later that he got his powers after he slept with a mage at a rock concert the night before. He is something called a creation mage who deals in sex magic. When he sleeps with a woman, he gains their magic. He goes off to an academy to learn magic. Okay, that is not a bad setup. Sounds intriguing. But then things happen that don't make sense. He goes to the academy and is supposed to be taught magic but he was never taught anything. He finds out that the academy is a war mage school. My first questions would be: Who am I expected to be at war with? That was never asked. Why do I need to be at the academy? Again not asked. How does the academy work? How does this new world work? How am I supposed to pay for things? What am I supposed to do when I am no longer in the academy? What are the rules of the academy? How does magic actually work? What are the limitations? What are the dangers? None of these questions were answered. Instead it was a story about hot chicks walking around being hot and the MC getting turned on by all the beautiful women. Despite the constant talk about sex and the female bodies, there were only 2 sex scenes that I can remember. There wasn't any connection between the characters. There were too many casual curse words. I don't mind an F bomb during a fight or during an argument, but to constantly drop them during normal supposedly civilized conversation just isn't believable, especially when he talking to important people and the situation is completely inappropriate for that kind of thing.
This is another one of those books with an interesting idea but where the author skips the necessary groundwork.
Friendships and rivalries form on first contact, the protagonist starts throwing around power like a badass and competing in quests within hours of his arrival on a new world, and essentially everything is too easy and too neat. There are no story arcs here, just straight lines from plot point A to B and that creates a story without emotion because as a reader you don't really get invested in the characters and plot points.
I tried to enjoy it. I gave it a legitimate chance, but good lord it was bad. If you want a pot head Cheech & Chong book, this might work. I wanted a harem novel with a cool MC. I didn't want a whiny pot head who thinks getting stoned is great and isn't deeper than a puddle on the sidewalk. I will admit he at least had decent grammar. However I went a quarter of the way in and was honestly still wishing I had some kind of positive experience. Good grammar and editing only go so far. Less druggie more actual plot and character development and perhaps I might have been interested. BTW if you're a marijuana fan, this is probably right up your alley. If not, then not.
I received a free copy of this in exchange for a fair review. I did it on YouTube and will leave it linked below. This review will feature key points I think are important to highlight.
To start, it's freaking hilarious.
Plot: Clear and easy plot. You can break it down into 4 parts; the introduction of magic, the immersion into the world, settling into school, first class/mission. The introduction to magic is done with a battle, the immersion is a funky version of the Diagon Alley scene in Harry Potter(instead of good ole Hagrid we get a sexy sexy goth witch.), settling into school is where most of the world-building occurs and where we see the veritable buffet of ladies to pick from as well as some cool bonding moments between the male character, the mission is the culmination of the story and sets the foundation for what follows. I did not give anything away and everyone should read this! Its awesome. I don't have any complaints about the plot.
Characters: Great! Our MC is Justin a jock with nerdy tendencies lol. He also has some special secret sauce to make him important and to bring him a Harem. Par for the course but cool guy. We get some male characters here which is great! In order of preference we get Nigel the Wind Mage Halfling, Headmaster Chaosbane, Damien the Fire Mage, Rick the Earth Mage and Bradley the High Elf Fire Mage, each has something different to offer and are great. I have to say that Rick and Damien are very hard to keep as separate entities in my mind though, I always get them mixed up. Now the ladies are awesome, each one is different from the last and each brings a slightly different bit of humor and by-play with Justin. My favorite is Enwyn who is the one we spend most time with, Janet and Cecilia are lovely as well and they look great on the cover but no one beats Enwyn.
World-Building: Good! Magic is awesome! It is useful and powerful. The magic is divided into two groups; Elder and Elemental and though the Elder magic seems way more OP it seems to be balanced enough. I like the creatures and racial differences present with the magic groups. Lots of fun stuff here.
Fan Service: Very high quality smut. There was a time or two when a certain description left me scratching my head but it was nothing major over all the scenes contained passion and emotion! Very well done.
The relationships were a little too shallow and fast. The plot contained a few good ideas but the execution failed. This is NOT a horrible book, it is just nothing special.
I found the character of the magic school headmaster to be particularly obnoxious. The main character was willing to just go with anything. There is magic? Okay, cool. There are being that would like to kill me? Cool. May parents are ..., cool. That last one was particularly insane.
This book just doesn't pass the sanity check. The cahracters are just not believable.
There are mainly three names that always pop up in the recommended books when looking at the harem genre on Goodreads - Logan Jacobs, Eric Vall, and Dante King. I have read multiple entries from the first two, but not Dante King, so I figured I'd finally give him a shot. Honestly, I'd say this was... ok, compared to the rest of the field. A solid 2, maybe even 2.25. It has a shocking amount of worldbuilding - not that it had a lot, or even necessarily good worldbuilding, but it had an amount. Although, to be fair, I am coming off of Scholomance, which steals so many things from Harry Potter that it has a negative amount of worldbuilding of its own. So perhaps I'm giving this book a little too much credit in that department. But it feels like actual effort was put into fleshing out the world, at least for the tiny bit that it did. We learn about the schools of magic, and something called the Void War, and Mage Games, etc. The initial premise is interesting out of the gate... until it kind of meandered into nothingness. I think there's hope it could improve, though! Although whether or not he can manage to continue to expand and have it be interesting in later volumes remains to be seen. Another slightly positive aspect is that I didn't feel like the book was overly rushed. What I mean by that is, it did not present multiple scenarios and then rush through them, which is what the books written by the other two authors tend to do. We get introduced into the world, and then go on one quest, and that's the novel. While it could certainly be argued that this book failed to present a meaningful and compelling plot once the introduction finished, it did at least not feel like it was sprinting through plot points in order to meet some sort of quota. Succeeded in one category, failed in another. I do commend this book for having the first love interest and sex scene be with an older woman. A slightly older woman - only about 30 I think - but older nonetheless. All the other books I've tried seem to only focus on 20-somethings and avoid anything older at every turn, which has been a constant disappointment to me. It's nice to see a little variance.
Now, onto the negatives. I'll start out with something that isn't necessarily a negative, but a weird choice - usually, in these fish-out-of-water (or isekai) harem novels, the protagonist is more or less a nobody in his previous life, and then becomes a "somebody" in whatever world the book is creating. However, Justin here is already a "chad" - the story literally starts because he had slept with a mage (without him knowing that she was one), and it even makes reference to him having a ton of booty call numbers on his phone. Again, not a negative, but I think it's a weird direction to go in. Makes it all feel less "earned." Related to that, all the women are attracted to him from the start, without him having to put any effort into it. That can be ok, but it kind of becomes uninteresting when it happens all the time. - Hand in hand with the protagonist already being a "chad" is his attitude. He is a stereotypical frat dudebro douche, and it gets annoying as shit. Definitely the worst aspect of the book, in my opinion. He is constantly ogling women and thinking about having sex with them. Yeah, that's kind of the point of this genre, but you don't need to be such a brainless asshole about it. It makes the protagonist completely unlikable to me. He's also rattling off terribly unfunny jokes (that are presented as being hilarious) and making inappropriate comments at everything, regardless of his current company. It's quite grating. - Way too many references to real world things in this. I don't get why these authors continually do it. Do they think it makes it more relatable somehow? It just looks like incredibly lazy and unskilled writing to me. - Relationships with women being unrealistic is one thing. But something that always sticks out to me is how forced and fake the friendships with other men are. The 4 frat members meet, and within hours they are calling each other by nicknames and roaring with laughter at each other's jokes and stories. But it's even worse in this book than I have encountered before - one of the frat members is literally introduced as being a dick, and he even engages Justin in a fight because he's being so unreasonable. After a long fight, he is beaten, and then all is well moments after they stop fighting, and they're all the best of friends. It doesn't feel organic whatsoever. I'd rather just not have any of that at all. Speaking of which, we are told that female mages vastly outnumber males because of how magic works, but we sure do meet a lot of male characters compared to female. Odd choice for a harem novel.
Anyways, it has a decent premise, with the potential to be something better. It's at least hooked me enough to continue on with it. I've already started on the second.
I'm conflicted. Not a lot of characterization going on for any of the characters. Plus this is a real short story taking place over 3-4 days. It did have its fun spots.
The overall premise of this series is good. The characters have the potential to grow into some very enjoyable people to read about. I always enjoyed the anime series about magic schools so I am hoping that the story grows to scratch that itch.Overall it was entertaining.
Honestly if you’re a grammar Nazi, you should not read this series. Also I don’t recommend it to those who aren’t into harem novels. They’re my guilty pleasure reads and this one as the title says is irreverent and utterly hilarious. The next four books also keep to the same vein. Why so funny? puns, situational comedy in book form when the boys are around, sarcastic comments from the ladies, and a plethora of sex jokes, and the like that will make you honestly want to reread the books to laugh one more time. Now as to why grammarians would shudder... the grammar sucks, there’s several instances of miss-used wording imminent as opposed to eminent and the like affect vs. effect is surprisingly well taken care of but... this series would benefit from a good editor. Furthermore, and this pertains to the story, the MC is an op bad*** so everything goes his way with little in the way of challenges. This goes both for battles and for women which will grow tired soon but in the first five is interesting and still new despite played out tropes. I do have to say that if you’re interested the Chaosbanes are utter comedic gold and it’s well worth reading this series just for the interactions with said family. I should also point out the number of pop culture references which are funnier due to the fact that only the reader and one other character besides the MC get them. I won’t say I love this series... it’s good but it’s lacking in some regards but it’s one metric ton of fun.
Aside from the harem aspects, (which I rarely like in a book), this story was seriously funny. It had me laughing out loud many times, even while reading before bed. I'm sure the wife was extremely irritated. At one or two points, I was howling with laughter. Of course, if your sense of humor is significantly different from the author's, you may not progress to the howling/tears stage, but I'd wager most folks will at least get a kick out of the story. Very lighthearted, poking fun at all kinds of things, and great fun to read, and a relatively quick read as well.
Too much gain, no pain Things move very quickly into the action and the main character very quickly collects numerous “special“ things about him, before you have any real reason to care about him. He also doesn’t “earn“ anything through adversity before the award start accumulating.
The concept and description of a magic academy for college age is compelling if superficial. The magical frat house seems a little tired and cliched.
Justin is recruited by a mage university, kills someone in the process, and shrugs it off with virtually no morality. All the girls are hot, he gets all the girls he meets, and life is good. There is only a very loose definition of the worlds magical "system", and his special powers circumvent it.
I have enjoyed Dante's work on the last and this has been sitting in my reading cue. Finally got around to it and can't believe I didn't read it earlier. The world building and character development is on par with his other works (excellent). This series IMO is his best yet and I there were moments when I laughed out loud and at one point there were tears I was laughing that hard. Great pop culture references and a great storyline I can't wait to follow further along and see where that rabbit hole takes me.
Insipid but with the smallest glimmer of a decent story
There’s a good story buried somewhere under the endless descriptions of ogling/perving out done by the protagonist and boring fights and a janky uninspired magic system that exists more as a rationalization for harem antics. Females are all one dimensional sex doll bots with the barest hints of personality beyond an inexplicably immediate, insatiable craving for the protagonist’s meat stick. It’s reads as an Incel-level interpretation of female behavior and agency (or lack thereof).
One of the more fun books I've read lately. I was extremely pleased with this book and disappointed that I reached the end of it. I wish there were more already but alas I must wait. Rip roaring fun and a lot of fighting. This book only takes you to the first day at the magic Academy but boy it's a doozy. The cast of characters are fun and unique in their own way. I will enjoy seeing what the future will bring in this series.
No world building, half assed storyline. Clearly the only focus of the author is.
1. Making the protagonist the king of the world no matter what happens. 2. Win all the challenges with ease 3. Beat all challengers with some extra special secret magic that nobody else can perform, from day 1. 4. Have sex with all women, all women think the protagonist is the best and nobody is his equal.
I never read anything by this author, but was told by many that he was bad. I'm willing to see if they were right or not.
This featuring a "magic school" already lessened it in my eyes.
Against my better judgement, I actually enjoyed this book. It's a blatant Harry Potter knockoff with adult themes, but it seems well written, silly and fun.
It also doesn't take itself seriously.
So I will pick up the sequel and another book by the author.
This was a pretty good start by King. Granted the MC takes some getting use to… he’s like novocaine… you gotta give him time to work on you and he kind of grows on you… otherwise he kind tries too hard to be funny at times… I can already tell though his harem is going to be impressive. The world building though has been decent in this book. The backstory on Justin is pretty decent. I’m interested to see where this is going. Onward lads
Get out of my head Dante King! On second thought, stay there and write the next book! This is the book that happens if Harry Potter is an adult with tons of pop culture references. Basically the main character is thinking what you and I would think if we were there. Definitely going to be one of my favorite series!
Really fun read. MC jumps in head first when he finds out he is a wizard and heading to wizard university. If only real universities were filled with magic, crazy staff, ultra beautiful classmates and adventure around every corner. Throw in some intrigue and a mystery and you have this book.
I loved the story you have built with Justin and the gang, but felt it was a little too short for a introduction book and we would get more past the entrance exam and we see some other characters that were shown in the beginning, but are now no where to be found since they were considered oddballs too.
Young man gains magic powers, joins a battle school, beds chicks and gains their powers. There is nothing getting changing added in this book, but it's not needed. The book is solid and it's a great read. My only feedback would be there is a lot of inner monologue compared to dialog.
The start of another great series by Dante King. A young man discovers that magic is real and is enrolled in a magical academy. There he learns the secrets of his magic, and has the time of his life doing so. Life is awesome when you're a Creation Mage.
1 ) Way to fast, MC is tossing magic around like a pro only after a few days. 2 ) Zero world building, no limits on the magic etc 3 ) A head master that needs to be fired and put into prison for putting kids in danger. 4 ) Characters that are pretty shallow because the whole fking book was maybe 3 days of time!
Truly amazing New series!! A highly entertaining and enjoyable story with some really amazing characters!! I really would have been shocked if it wasn't the case but every story I've read by Dante King has been a blast to read!! Keep up the excellent story telling!!!
Hell yeah..A Mage with balls....and not afraid to use em. I love the attitude of hell yeah "magic" from the MC. If I discovered I had magic I'd probably react the same way...freaking awesome. Can't wait for the next one.
Harem? Check. Magic? Check. Some very interesting world/cosmos building? Check. This is going to be a fun series to keep my eye on. Plus it’s got tons of little pop culture nods that I like.