Climbed out from the bottom of the barrel

I had feared I'd been through the last of the good stuff having being largely disappointed with the last half dozen titles, until I found this one. This is certainly not bottom of the barrel.
In fact it's been a while that I've looked forward to menial tasks just so I could slip my head phones on and disappear into a good book.
It's faced paced, interesting story that doesn't follow the more common line themes in this genre. I would liken this closely to "The Legend of the Arch Magus", also a fantastic series.

The only negative are the strange inflections of the narrator at the end of each sentence. It's almost as though the narrator is reading a tag line from the latest action movie trailer. I can get past the movie trailer stuff though because Alex Wyndham does have a good voice for narration and his voice acting for the various characters helps bring the whole thing to life.

Topping up my credits now to make sure I have enough for the whole series so far.

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3 people found this helpful

Enjoyed the storyline

I am enjoying the first of Mageborn series having listened to the Art of Adept series but I am sad to say the narrator is driving me up the wall. He accentuates every vowel so long becomes looong , again becomes aaagain and soo on. Once you have heard it you can’t unhear it and it’s very off putting!

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1 person found this helpful

a very good boooooook

what is with the way he ends every single sentence like it's a massive revaltion?

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Amazing

Outstanding book cannot wait to sink my teeth into another universe created by Manning.

Onwards!!!!

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Story great although a bit short, narrator mixed

Really enjoyed the story, although it was a bit short and felt a little rushed, so 4 out of 5. The narrator had increadibly good voices for the characters and in that respect is one of the best I've heard in my huge library, HOWEVER, when he was just narrating the monologue and not putting on a characters voice, his voice sounded like AI, being completely flat until the last word of each sentence which he drawled out and raised pitch in a truly irritating way, and he read far to quickly as if rushing,, but as his character voices were so amazing I will still give him 4 out of 5, rather than 1 out of 5 for the narration.
Highly recommend the Art of the Adebt books by the same author as those rank in my top 5 of all time of thousands.

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Well written,fun and superbly narrated story

I've listened to first 3 books in Manning's Art of the Adept series and I must say that while I did enjoy those books Mageborn almost feels like it was written by a completely different person. There's a lot more humor here and the dialogue is written in such a way that the characters feel a lot more real than they do in Art of the Adept.

First of all I'm happy that the first book in it's entirety is mainly about the main character understanding who he really is and the entire book is spent in the castle he goes to with his friend at the very start, as a result the story doesn't feel incredibly rushed like it does in most stories like this.

If you're like me you'd probably expect for the main character to be forced into some extremely dangerous escape from the castle, chased by assassins within the first 3 hours and then he gets saved by some great old wizard in the forest who will train him by the end of the book. That's how most books like this would go but not here, that's not what Manning wanted for this series and I'm so pleased by the first entry that I immediately bought the second one.

Also it's pretty refreshing to listen to fantasy books that aren't at least 20 hours long for once. That said considering how short the first few books are it would be nice if we could buy the whole thing in 2 parts. The entire series is about 60 hours long so I feel like it wouldn't be unreasonable to combine the first 3 books into one collection and do the same with last 2 books.

That said if the first book is any indication of quality then I'll gladly spend that money and I'll probably end up going through Champions and Embers of Illeniel as well. Those two series are the main reason why I brought up how expensive this could get because I'm looking at a reading order of 11 books. I'm not sure about Riven Gates yet but Embers of Illeniel is what I'm really excited about so I'm starting here with Mageborn.

If you wanna get into the series as a whole this is the reading order as recommended by the author: Entire Mageborn series, Embers 1, Champions 1, Embers 2, Champions 2, Embers 3 and Champions 3 followed by Riven Gates series.

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2 people found this helpful

amazing listen

I loved the book. i enjoy listening to Alex narrate these books as he did for the prequels.

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1 person found this helpful

Would not recommend

I found the story development basic and some of the attitudes toward women sexist in places.

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Managed to finish but not great

agree with a lot of the other reviews, quite juvenile at times, and a distinct lack of editing in places.

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1 person found this helpful

Old basic story….nothing new

Was looking forward to it but it was nothing out of the ordinary…… a basic story I have read elsewhere.
Really wasn’t anything new.

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