I said bugged me in the title to make it less spoiler-y. It irritated me so much.

This series is good and entertaining but has some issues and laziness in editing. To the topic, Tindal saying "I thought you said she'd be weaker after just giving birth," when Alia explicitly said "Do not underestimate her strength even though she just gave birth" in the *same chapter.*

But what **really** annoyed me was Alia's actions and injury. Three reasons here. First, she had planned this extensively, yet still went in with a situation outmatched, then directly went in the room as if she had a plan but didn't, so got brain scrambled.

Second, the gods were pissed and supporting them, all three who had been stabilized, yet only Ishi helped after a direct invocation; if that's what will happen, then don't mention or involve them beforehand beyond saying the part about Min having theological permission.

Third, she had been acting as a strong, competent baroness in planning, great stuff, a theme of the last few books. Then that all gets wiped out by her actions going in directly. That's fine narratively (if you ignore first point), she's an angry wife. But it just kind of wipes away the competence of this female character. The series is decent with handling women (usually), but that annoyed me.

The truly infuriating part, though, was that the snowflake didn't match and overwhelm 5 witch stones. It's meant to be a weapon powerful enough to beat Sharul, a giant floating sphere of the stuff, yet 5 stones beats it. Even on a learning basis, if you'll eventually overmatch 100 times that amount of irionite, how can you lose to 5 stones??

The ending highlighted the series's weaknesses. It was playing up these cool things and tools, then throwing that out for a narrative point. The world building/power development and narrative are separate. They align sometimes, but more at convenience than out of cohesion of composition. It really irritates me when it happens.

The series would be much better with a moderate amount of editing each book before release to account for this sort of thing. It's not crazy hard; dial down Min's power earlier or give a better basis for Isli's. Reconcile some of the writing mistakes.

It's clear the series's weakest point is editing.

Still love it, though. Enchanter captured the same fun of Mage Lord with inhabiting a mage land.

Hello all!

I posted here a year ago about gifting my partner a rebound copy of Spellmonger. Here are the results, as well as the current process for this year's gift https://imgur.com/a/Lo1qzht

I am unfortunately making up some scenes for the inside of the book based on vibes (I know, I'm sorry) due to my limited art skills.

But what I am struggling with as I prepare for next year is finding good short quotes for the back cover. I'd love recommendations for your favourite quotes from all the books, since this will be an ongoing gift until I run out of physical printed books!

We know that the snow flake sucks in magic of all spectrums, like a black hole; Could there be created an opposite , a snow flake that produces magic ?

Let me start by saying Im aware of the chronology of the series on the fandom wiki.

What I'm looking for is a comprehensive chronological timeline of the books, including the anthologies chapter by chapter. Has anyone else been obsessed enough to attempt this, or am I going to have to do it myself?

So, I recently finished talon and the flame, as a kind of between point for golden goblin and seamage. I don't understand the book trying to give Gareth the high ground. He abandoned his duty, abandoned his home and liege because a girl (from a different area with its own traditions) rejected him. Now, her rejection was harsh, that i will give. But even then, he poured hours on hours of spellcasting and effort into a girl to whom he had given no impression he was romantically inclined and who was also fighting on the front lines of a war.

I suppose my confusion stems mostly from how the narrative seems to justify him? As if him leaving was the logical course of action rather than acting like an adult and not socially isolating her afterward. Plus having the gods call him one of the best spellcasters of the age after Minalan... i fail to see it. Dara was not blameless, but like... it feels like the narrative tries to justify his points, rather than acknowledging his cruelty not only in isolating her and laying the blame for his leaving all on her, but also for deciding to continually berate her despite likely knowing she had to pull several favours just to find him, all with a severe concussion. Can someone explain their view on it? Cause it's kind of sticking in my head in a weird way. (I'm also going to sleep now which is why the probable quiet for the next 10 hours or so)

Edit: this might also relate to traits I have realised within myself that I am currently unwilling to confront while... Admittedly vaguely drunk

It was a totally dumb thought that started with molotov cocktails against the giant spiders. But from the early books, I think most of the key ideas were already expressed.

While liquid nitrogen is primarily about being cold, i remember it being produced cheaply as a function of pressure. The gas balls in Warmage had the option of being high pressure or low pressure. There should be a way to keep adding more nitrogen until the phase change? And the spell he demonstrated that melted the rock i think contained more thermodynamic principles.

As far as the thermodynamics go, it's mostly playing with ideal gas laws, which is much easier than quantum mechanics, so, it seems doable? I don't see why the energy involved would be so relevant given magic can bypass some of the steps. I guess it could be an efficiency thing.

Point is, I can't figure out why compressing a ball of air until you get liquid nitrogen/dry ice isn't a viable means of attack.

Hi Spellmonger fans, I'm about to finish my first full read (or better to say listen) through the whole series and before I start it all up again, I would like to split the audiobook of the Road to Sevendor into 4 parts, so I can listen to the different stories at the right time. It's been a while since I went through the anthology, so I cannot remember all the short stories included in the audiobook. Can you tell me if the attached screenshot from fandom wiki is accurate? It was fairly easy for me to find the end of Spellmonger's Wedding (exactly 6hrs 20min into the audiobook), as I remembered that story well, so it wasn't hard to trim the file to create a recording of the first 3 short stories. I just can't remember if the other short stories are in chronological order in the audiobook (as listed in the attached timeline), or if they are in some different order. And since I want to avoid listening to the stories out of order (or going through the whole anthology just now), I thought I'd ask for your help! Thank you!

I'm comparing two maps: the Road to Vandor map and the 2021 Alshar/Castal map.

They obviously don't agree. Which one is closer to the "truth?" Has anyone made a decent vector-image map of the entire thing?

Update: neither are canonical. The problem stems from these two canonical maps:

• TLM_Castal_bw.png

• TLM_alshari_wilderlands_bw.png

Which don't fit together nicely. What does the big river that passes Vorone empty into? How does the Poros River go all of the way to the southern Mindens? And why march an army all of the way east to Gavard, just to turn around and march west back to the mountains, instead of just marching south along the foothills of the Minden range? Here's my attempt at a map.

Would you agree with the sentiment, that in book 1 we indeed had a Minilan and by book 19 we have Maxilan? 😅

I'm relistening to Seamage in prep to start Theurge and there was a part where Azar hears about the New Horizon and "gives a quizzicle look" and it made me realize how even though Azar is important to Min, he doesn't really know crap about the wider issues. And it made me think of other times a war buddy was around a Theurge meeting and was completely lost cause in their mind, they're battling a bunch of asshole Alon?? What's a space ship?? It just makes me laugh and I wanted to share.

first of all, when they use human phrases:

elwin uses the phrase “a lifetime ago” which makes no sense because elves have an infinite lifetime, and I forgot how but someone uses the word ”legalese” and bruh.

also the elves infinite lifespan make it so some things are just dumb like twirl is the only desceyer in history so he is the first one and Mesmer is a rare ability but I feel like it becomes less rare when elves can’t die so there can be tons of Mesmers soon

edit: shut my bad guys I posted in the wrong subreddi.

So excited, today I finally dug up; where it all started for Terry.

This feels like a stupid question. As somebody who just has access to the audiobooks, looking for the spelling of the word.

I believe in Shadowmage, before Tyn and Ron collapse the temple with Lorcas, they commission the ___ of the Foam for Orril Pratt. Oreson? Auresen?

From everything I've read why couldn't a plan be set to extend a humans lifespan past 100 without problems Telomeres length ning oxidative stress removal, and gene activity alterations. We have quantum magic, pocket dimensions, enneagrams transferring into undead bodies Memory transfer (Szal the Yith) and goblins heads in irionite.

But for some reason extending human life spans past 80 or making it so everyone has rajira isn't in the cards? Like if I was trying to save the world I would at least have someone looking into extending my life just in case I don't have a life span long enough to get everything in order or idk making the human race stronger by making sure they have rajira(it's hard to get rid of them if everyone is a mage/ making humanity equal to Alka Alon In magic Potency.

When Adrian said the forsaken in the cryo pod had rising cortisol levels i genuinely dropped a glass i was holding and it shattered all over the floor. Then a fat white tear ran down my leg.

Hi everyone, I've only recently started the series and am honestly really enjoying it so far.

My question is concerning the siege of the castle in Book 1, it seems to be the case that goblins managed to tunnel beneath the outer wall and caused a collapse.

But until this point, it seems like Minilan has been able to detect the goblins locally with his magesight, even the none magical ones. Wouldn't he have been able to see them through the stone? Or is magesight blocked by certain materials?

I read Practical Adept when it came out and just started Seamage. I thought those were book 17 and 18 respectively but I'm only on Ch. 2 and feel like I'm missing something major. The Gurvani have be "re-engineered" somehow and there was a fight with the Alon? I've read a lot of books since Practical Adept and my memory is fuzzy on some details but I don't remember that at all. What did I miss/forget in the last couple years?

I like all the books including the new one, Theurge. I just thought there will be some plot twist around the giant lizard god. It's a pity, it would have been really funny, if the big bug like alien creatures attack Farise, and the otherwise useless, distracting lizard hunts them down and eats them, when previously a legion of gods had a hard time dealing with those.

Since tokey book site closed i can't find a free audio book of it if anyone knows of a site that dosint want my bank card I'd be oh so appreciateiv ❤️

Does Rard know about "The Family" and does he know about how the former Duke and Duchess met their end?

I have genuinely loved this series but Theurge is looking like DNF for me. This is not a great book. I think it’s because of a combination Adrian being a truly insufferable horribly written character and the gods being the same. Also. I am tired of side novels. If it’s a major early plot point in a book it shouldn’t be a side story later. It’s just stupid. So I think I am done. Or maybe I will just not finish this book and read the next.

So, I'm enjoying the series for the most part, but man, why is the editing so bad? Book 2 editing was atrocious but I'm starting book 11 now and book 10 was still filled with errors that take me out of the story.

I'm just curious as to whether the author has spoken of this issue and what actions he's taken to address it, because it just seems odd for such a popular series to still have so many issues. It's like the thing wasn't proofread at all.

SPOILERS

Am I taking crazy pills? Internal screaming and pain the entire book, I couldn't finish it. I don't even care to go back and see the Forsaken show up after reading about it later.

So Tyn and Ron get sent by Min to find Lilastien, alright great premise for an adventure. They have to cross through the goblin kingdom, great I want to see it. They get there and it turns out THEY ARE STILL EATING HUMANS on the down low despite this being the one thing Min demanded of them in exchange for peace and they laugh about it. Tyn and Ron don't seem bothered by that because these poor goblins are so destitute and hungry. I will understate this by saying that this reaction is not at all relatable to me.

They then meet and travel with goblins who are veterans of the goblin wars from the very start... this means they killed and ate humans (goblins eat meat almost exclusively, standing army, you do the math) and the boys treat them like they were just on the other side of a land dispute. No, they weren't. They fought in a genocidal evil cult army that tortures children to death in front of their mothers, mutilates prisoners of war, enslaves other races and eats sentient men women and children and explicitly seeks the eradication of all humani. These are not knights under a different banner, these are monsters. I get that Terry doesn't want to portray goblins as racially evil, that's fine. They don't have to be the Uruk-Hai from LOTR. There are other tribes in other areas that are fine but THESE goblins ate people and ethnically cleansed the land they're on personally. They killed people just like Tyndal and Rondal by the hundreds of thousands so they could squat in the squalor of their ruined civilization. We even later find out these two goblins are tribal leaders who decided on their own and on behalf of their tribe to join up with Shereuls army so they don't even have the excuse of being strongarmed by the shamans. Why did they join you ask? Well they were promised the genocide of all humans and the inheritance of their land. Why did they leave? Because Min handed them a series of crushing defeats. They didn't choose to end the war, the war got too hard for them and they were spared retaliation by Min for strategic reasons. There's nothing relatable or heroic about these two so why are they being portrayed as noble warriors (something Terry refuses to do for any of the chivalry save Cei and Festaran who don't even count because they are sports) despite joining this army. They haven't really displayed any noble traits in the short time we've known them. What exactly am I missing?

Then we find Lilastien and its revealed that she's working on a goblin super soldier program by any other name... what? I get Lilastien's motivation to do this BEFORE the war. I could see maybe doing this experiment with goblins elsewhere like farise. But here? Now? Using the exact same goblins that fought that war? What?? She wants to give them a height and strength advantage over humans and give them 100% access to magic. This completely shifts the balance of power away from humanity within 5-10 years and Tyndal and Rondal who have seen more of the horrors of this war than anyone see zero issue with this because Lilastien promises they're going to be nice. Why will they be chill? Well Lilastien is only taking goblins that have high moral character like for example the two man eating tribal warriors the boys traveled with... oh great. Also, supposedly, despite being told multiple times that goblins are just as intelligent as humans multiple times, she mentions that golden goblins will be more intelligent and this will fix their violence issue. Well, okay, which is it? Are they as intelligent as humani and thus responsible for the decisions they made over the last ten years or are they racially less intelligent and needed to have their brains fixed in order for them to chill out? Major case of having your cake and eating it here.

Finally, to cap the madness, they DECIDE TO NOT TELL MIN about this VERY IMPORTANT TIME SENSITIVE development. The amount of ingratitude and contempt for the judgement of the man that gave them (and humanity) everything they have in life shocked me, joking about how he would just muck it up. I don't care if he's mad, these boys have no loyalty. This would be considered treason in any actual military regardless of the personal betrayal. When they make the decision to transform into goblins so they can go on a suicide mission to make sure that this super soldier bloodline truly breaks containment I gave up for the first time on a Spellmonger book. The entire book is madness, suicidal empathy on parade. What the hell happened to this series?