For those of you that follow my little reviews, you will know that I love the author Scott Meyer. The series Off to be the Wizard is absolutely amazing. In fact after finishing the 1st one I bought the others as soon as I could.
After this series, I listened to whatever else he had available.
Off to be the Wizard
Spell & High Water
An Unwelcome Quest
Master of Formalities
The Authorities
Click each of these for their own full review.
For a complete review of The Off to be the Wizard series, otherwise known as Magic 2.0 please click here (opens in a new tab)
Book 1- Centres around Martin Banks, and we follow him finding the file, getting into trouble, introducing hilarious intricate characters, teleporting himself back through time when he’s about to get caught, and then learning that there’s others just like him who found the file before him and start training him on being ‘a wizard’. After a good ¾ s of the story… which by the way they’re just exploring the whole concept and their powers… they find that someone has been trying to make hobbits. Yes, hobbits. And Martin and his friends must try to stop them.
Book 2 Spell And High Water – focuses on Martin and Philip’s journey to the ancient city of Atlantis, which turns out is actually run by a group of female ‘sorcerers’ who like Martin and Phillip also found the file, and are now holding a conference for which all people who found the file and consider themselves time-travellers.
The conference focuses on the effects of time travel and lessening the impact but interwoven between this conference is a murder plot for which Martin and Phillip have to solve.
Book 3 An Unwelcome Quest – would you believe that it has something to do with a quest…that no one wants to go on?
Of course it does.
So, Todd who was formerly in exile (jail) manages to escape, make a life for himself… and then get revenge on those who banished him from his former wizarding title, and sets up a computer game like quest whilst also stripping the main group from their powers.
He’s very clever but also a little thick, as apparent by how he structures the whole quest. It IS simple, and it IS repetitive, but it’s entertaining all the way through.
Luke Daniels does the voice acting for all 3 books and he pulls it off fantastically. I especially like the way he performs Todd’s character. He manages to get it just right, so much so that you can clearly image exactly what kind of person he is, and at some points in the book you kind of relate to him. He’s the perfect troll…without knowing that he is trolling anyone.
Master of Formalities is essentially about dysfunctional political formalities set across space. There are 2 dominant families controlling vast empires… they are at war, they are bickering.. there’s some guy called Wollard who is the family’s Master of Formalities and instructs the family and all those involved on the proper way of acting when in the presence of another person from a different culture so that no one is offended or nothing is mis-construed.
It…is…incredibly slow and boring in my opinion and as such is one of only 2 books I’ve used audible’s ‘great listen guarantee’ on. And returned it unconditionally. I did actually make it through to the end of this book… and it gets better, but no enough to be considered a ‘great listen’. The only other book I returned was a Star Wars Rebels spin-off book for which I’ve forgotten what it was about, in fact I think I purged it from memory. So at least the Master of Formalities wasn’t that terrible.
The Authorities? I’ll let the publisher’s summary tell what it’s about.
All 5 books are narrated by Luke Daniels, so you can hear similarities slightly between characters, but it doesn’t matter because he is a great narrator, and makes all the characters interesting.
So anyway, in terms of listening awesomeness / ranking for which of Scott Meyer’s books I found the best, I would have to say
- Off to be the Wizard, Magic 2.0 book 1
- An Unwelcome Quest, Magic 2.0 book 3
- Spell & High Water, Magic 2.0 book 2
- The Authorities
- Master of Formalities
Brilliant author, worlds of imagination, great story telling.
There’s meant to be an advert below which is a link for you to get 2 free audio books….if you can’t see it, ‘allow ads’ or ‘disable adblocker’ from your adblocker software on this website.
Happy listening!
If not… then click this link:
Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks
Recent Comments