As of writing this review, I have read Blood of a Novice, and received a copy as an ARC reader.
Cam Folde will shake the very fabric of creation… or see all his hopes turn to ash.
The son of the town drunk, Cam never figured on letting his family name hold him down. He always strove to dream bigger, to fight for something better, to achieve more than what everyone else expected of him.
But, as they say, ‘once a Folde, always a Folde’, and when a decision to rescue a friend leads to disaster, fortune’s favor is lost. Cam spirals away from his dreams and ambitions; his fall finally ending at the bottom of a bottle.
But all hope is not lost. Cam rises, supported by family and friends. And when a powerful Master of Ephemera offers him a chance to walk the Way into Divinity and achieve redemption, Cam seizes the opportunity. All he has to do is survive the Ephemeral Academy, the very school where the next generation of Masters are trained. There, Cam just might achieve the greatness he’s always sought, and with friends at his side, including an irrepressible Awakened panda, it even seems possible.
But Cam will soon discover that the Way into Divinity is as steep as it is arduous, and there are more fearsome things than humans who brave its perilous climb…
Okay, so right off the bat, if you are a fan of magic academies, you’ll enjoy this. If Mark of the Fool, Arcane Ascension, Art of the Adept, Shattered Gods, or similar works are something you enjoy, just stop here and grab the book.
There’s plenty to enjoy with this book. First, we have a great class of characters. There is Cam and all his history to untangle. As hinted in the blurb, his best friend is Pan, an Awakened Panda, whose backstory is tied into an unknown prophecy. Avia is an Awakened Orca with human appearance, and it’s always a delight seeing her perspective and sayings come through with such a strong influence from her origin as an orca. Not a fish. There’s Jade, a human noble, and Weld, an arrogant commoner, and they’re all in the same squad.
Characters all feel very distinct from one another, have their own motivations, speech patterns, issues, and ways of approaching problems and conflicts. It’s great to read. The conflicts generally centre around lancing boils, which is this universe’s equivalent to destroying dungeons, closing portals, curing the blight, etc. Boils come complete with evil cultivators called rakshasas.
Those fights are fun, tactical, and really allow Cam to shine.
Which is good, because Cam was my main concern in the early book. The first part of the book (prior to the Ephemeral Academy) is, I think, the weakest part. It’s all about setting Cam up, but it takes a long while to do it, and has Cam and his childhood friends delving Paths to advance their cultivation. I won’t go into how this works or the different tangs you can have, as how they interact is potentially a spoiler, and it’s better to find out as you go.
Suffice it to say, delving doesn’t go well.
Minor spoilers here: Cam only lives because a much stronger Ephemeral Master is there to save his life and help him advance. And then, still in the intro, when he goes to a second path, once again he does nothing himself, and a different Ephemeral Master is there to guide him and help him advance. After these two delves, Cam’s effective master sponsors him and Pan into the Academy.
This felt super weird. The Academy is built up to be an elite, prestigious place. “Any who attend are Novice Primes.” Cam is not a Novice Prime. In fact, only a few pages later, Cam (and thus the author) highlights this: “…neither of them skilled in Ephemera and already behind every other student in the academy.” How he is now attending a prestigious academy… despite never having actually used any of his powers, well it felt weird. Like the plot needs Cam there, so there he goes.
Eventually when Cam pulls ahead at the Academy you understand why he was put there, so fear not!
The Academy arc kicks off around Chapter Fourteen (yes, this is a long book), and I enjoyed that section greatly. There are a variety of secondary characters, and all the relationships within Light Squad (Cam’s squad) to explore. The mentors are fun, the training sections are diverse (there’s even dance as a form of training, instead of just hitting things with your fists over and over).
On top of that, we have the staple of cultivation novels… cultivating. And I really liked how this book handles it, with analogues to different phases of matter and the strong but intuitive mental imagery that is conjured throughout the cultivation. I am a sucker for cultivation sequences and experimenting with powers, and thus I got sucked right in.
So between the Academy, the exams, competitions, and the lancing of boils, it’s a super hectic year for Cam. Book one closes on an open note: Cam has many options for where he and the team can go in the next book, and I’m keen to see what he picks.
