Mark of the Fool

Mark of the Fool

by J.M. Clarke

After his parents died, Alex Roth had a plan: become a wizard. Through hard work, he was accepted into the world’s greatest university of wizardry—but fate had another plan.

On his eighteenth, he is marked as one of his kingdom’s five Heroes, chosen to fight the land’s great enemy. But his brand is 'The Fool', worst of the marks.

Rather than die or serve the other Heroes like Fools in the past, he packs up his little sister, his childhood friend and her cerberus, then flees for the university in hope of refuge, magic and to unravel the truth about his land’s evil.

There’s one small problem: The Mark tries to ruin magic while enhancing skills outside of divinity, combat and spellcraft.…

…that is, unless he can learn to exploit the hell out of it.

Genres: Fantasy

web serial

First published March 26, 2021

Reviews

[Johnny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well I found this on RoyalRoad. Took me a week to read 309 chapters.
I found it to be a lot of fun with some great characters.
I look forward to reading more as more chapters are published.

[R · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this hot on the heels of The Wandering Inn: Volume 2.
Amusingly, it has tons of references to The Wandering Inn and I enjoyed it a lot.

The reason I gave it a 4, and not a 5 is because I entered it with greatly different expectations.
It is slice-of-life with no major conflict. There was a lot of promise for conflict, and I am sure that the subsequent books will deliver on the promise. I was not able to get invested in the fights in the book.

Will continue with the series.

[Topher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Continuing my theme of struggling to read actual books, getting sucked into web serials, and then finding them on here....

Alex is a fun character, and has found a way to make his "blessing" into an actual blessing. As I write this, I've just finished up book 1, and will likely keep reading until I'm caught up to the present.

I have kindle and library books I should read too, but I am enjoying this one enough to want to stick with it. It's much more fun.

[Vilius · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was going to give it one star but the author does improve a lot over the course of the first book. The world bends over backward to make this regular guy mc be something special but not even in a fun way. There are sparks of something more interesting happening in the background but nothing ever comes of it. It could have been 3 or even 4 stars if it was shorter and the interactions between characters weren't so bad.

[Mrinmoy Akash · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good so far. Large world, interesting magic, well written. I wish characters had a bit more depth though.

[S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wizard university with creative magic system. Humor, action, mystery.