Turret Mage

As of writing, Book 1 is out on Kindle/Audible, Book 2 (Machine Mage) is out, and Book 3 (Mechamage) is published. I’ve read both Kindle books and all RR chapters.

Blurb

A teenage mechanic must battle nightmarish creatures and create formidable weapons to defend his new home from dark forces in this thrilling portal fantasy.

When Ryan Kotes awakens on an alien planet, his mind is a complete mess. But even with his memories ground into a fine paste, he’s pretty sure he would remember having a metal arm . . . not to mention the flashing messages that keep playing across his vision.

Anyone in Ryan’s position would have a few questions. It’s too bad the System tutorial meant to guide him through the vulnerable start to his new life on Ralqir has gone slightly insane, and his arrival may have kicked off this world’s version of the apocalypse.

Not everything is doom and gloom though. Because Ryan discovers he’s an Exotic: an ascended being with a connection to the great cosmic machine known as the System. What could stand in his way? Well, other than having a skill set that is not suited to combat. If things come down to fighting, his abilities to shape metal and infuse objects with mana won’t cut it.

To survive the coming end times, when the dead will walk and the darkness will feast on the living, Ryan will need to get creative, transforming his crafting Class into something deadly. Building fearsome munitions, he must hone his mind itself into a weapon and use his mechanical know-how to usher in a new age of warfare.

The first volume of the hit LitRPG adventure series—with almost 900,000 views on Royal Road—now available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook!

Thoughts

This series will be for you if you want a good American portal fantasy.

Strange opener, I know. See, I read the blurb and saw the cover art and thought that there will be a strong crafting into combat focus, maybe like Chaotic Craftsman, which I love. And the MC is blessed with an absurdly powerful crafting class and an even more powerful mechanical arm which can Consume things to grant affinity for them and let him never run out of mana. Alas, Ryan invents grenades. Then guns. And then turrets. And then power armour. And then automating drones to make turrets. There’s some creativity in how its all done, but with the OP powers Ryan has there was sooooo much more that could have been done, which makes this much less a crafting series, and a gunner series where the MC is able to make turrets instead of buying them, but the end result is pretty identical.

The other interesting thing about this series is that its setting changes. The first book is about the world of Ralqir, which is where Ryan goes for his broken tutorial (and gets stuck). There’s a cast of characters, a big bad, lots of fights… but Ryan does eventually leave, which leaves all the supporting characters behind and resets his level to a glitched level-0. And then a new arc (in his home universe) starts, which is heading toward an academy arc before the series went on hiatus. But for those who liked the characters of the first arc, we’re hundreds and hundreds of pages past waving them goodbye and I don’t think they’re coming back.

The characters are well done, with the weakest character IMHO being the MC himself. The others have strong goals and personalities, and while Ryan doesn’t suffer from blank-MC syndrome (he has a life and history in his original universe), he does suffer from a bit of character whiplash, wherein when things get tough he goes on long mental monologues about pushing back and not being beaten down and rising up, which doesn’t fit with a lot of his peacetime thoughts and musings.

I think the series put itself in a bit of a strange position to be honest. It’s a crafting MC with little crafting or experimentation. It’s a save-the-world stakes story… that has the MC save the world and leave it. It’s got an overarching System Corruption plot which might tie arcs together, but is too unrealised to be motivating at the point of hiatus. I’m curious to see where the author may take it when they return to writing.