Foundations

Bastion Academy, Book 1

By: J.D. Astra

Narrated by: Jason Vu

For Jiyong, Bastion Academy is more than just a school for magic in the heart of the Kingdom . . .

It's his chance to pursue the secrets of the ancient ones' machines and get his family out of the poverty-stricken outer-city. His acceptance letter in hand, Jiyong is sure nothing will stand in the way of his dreams.

When a street brawl lands him in a coma only weeks into the year, his chances of graduating are all but shot. With an unlikely digital companion, he'll have to rebuild his magic core and catch up on all his classes, or risk being dropped from the academy at the end of the year.

But kingdom life is not like the outer-cities, and kingdom kids are far more ruthless about who they'll allow to climb to the top. Jiyong will have to train hard and fight for every score to make it in this wealthy academy for powerful families, all while supporting his own from afar.

From J. D. Astra, author of Viridian Gate Online: Firebrand, comes a brand-new Cultivation Academy series, bursting at the seams with nanites, martial arts, and robot battling.

©2020 J.D. Astra (P)2023 Tantor

Just ok

Just an OK book. MC is from what we would think of as the slums. but is more polite than everyone else. then there is this strange affair with the little sister about to barrow more money than reasonable, and his only option is to do botfights. academy rules that make no sense but for plot reason. but don't worry those rules don't apply to the MC.

I Enjoyed It

While this is a very short book and thus I'm unlikely to buy any further volumes in the series unless they're on sale or the author does an omnibus, I enjoyed the listen.

I didn't like all the nonsense (or other language?) words for the various types of magic, how slow the default narration speed was set at to try to make the book look less short, or how the author isn't consistent with some side details like the number of siblings the main character has and their genders, but these are just small faults.

Additionally, the main character struck me as doing quite a bit more emotional thinking than what is typical for male characters, but there are more solution-focused thinkers among female characters in some fictions too, so I could look past it. Having said that, the main character is also a teenager and I knew more emotional male thinkers in high school than I encounter as adults. It is not an endearing trait though, so I found myself put out with the main character's behavior on occasion.

Still, overall this was a pleasant read. I had fun and I'll add the others in the series to my wishlist to pick up when they are affordable on sale or an omnibus comes out.

Great mix of tech and magic

I almost skipped this book because of the negative review. Glad I didn't listen to those.

The MC is humble and definitely not secure. That role fits well given the background of the character. The tech powered by magic was a welcome change and made the world a lot more interesting. The story is fun with the MC not overpowered but building to it.

Narrator is good and does characters well, but would have been better with a second female narrator. Also, while the narrator tries to put emotion into his narration, much of the time he has somewhat of a softer voice. This works for most of the book but you do miss some of the cool parts because they are not voiced with more emotion.

Just pre-ordered the next book and can't wait to listen to that!

There r a lot of good things happening here...

The world building and magic system r cool ...the writing is good ...the whole premise is dope ...lots of potential for awesomeness to happen in this story.

My only real complaint is that the MC is too emotional ...like it'd be good at like a 3 or 4, but this guy is on 10. Makes him seem pretty annoying. Actually ...on top of the emotional thing, this is one of those books where the MC makes some questionable decisions n u just have to tolerate the idiocy

why

you recreated the wheel and you really didn't need to do it. also the eating gives you power is a wierd choice