Outlaw Magic

The Last Magus, Book 5

By: DB King

Narrated by: Alex Knox

Alec Diamondspear and his friends have arrived at the Haunted Isle.

He promised to return Alison to her family, and that’s what he’s setting out to do.

But the Haunted Isle earned its name for a reason. What lurks beneath its surface could prove the undoing of Alec and leave his quest against Chaos forever unfulfilled.

©2022 DB King (P)2022 Podium Audio

The island

The story was not as exciting and the twists were not as intense as the previous 4 books. However the story helped develop all the characters into more battle ready party ready for the attack they will hopefully launch on Chaos in the coming stories.

Story stalling out a bit

This part of the story stalled out a bit and ended just as progress started to happen.

Great Story - best narrator

This is a great and entertaining story. Many plot twists with a developing story across the series that is not overly complicated. Truly enjoy the elaborate visual descriptions as well as the nuances of the individual characters. Alex Knox brings the book to life. His delivery is as close to perfection as there is - the voices, the pitch, the accents- amazing.

Book feels rushed.

As in the book feels unfinished and somewhat meandering. And characters do thing that feels stupid.
Which I want to emphasize, liking dumb characters is fine. I prefer characters that make poor choices. Especially if the character had thought out there choices and or given the reader a “reason” to believe that the character would do that. For this book I feel like characters make bad choices and sometimes get punished yet nothing really changes and whatever happened doesn’t impact them or the story. It’s like a filler arc or padding out the book. Through for this series the main character has been quick on the uptake, being able to make choices that has given him an advantage within fights. To then panic over slow moving, horde creatures. Feels like a weird cliche that doesn’t fit the character. Or was poorly written and didn’t come off as a panic moment in my mind. Plus the description of some of the fights fall flat and come off as like a few paragraphs are missing and jump around in weird ways.
Also for a fantasy world with magic, most of the other characters don’t use there magic and choose to just run or not react “in time”, which happens a more times than I like. Expectedly when the other characters have trained to fight and or are like 300 years old and are revered for there genius…
Which is only the start with the problem of this book. The villains are even worse. Like big baddies are called chaos? I mean we learned there name three books ago and I’m still eye rolling every time I hear it. It’s not haha funny bad name, it’s just boring. Then there obvious villainy that’s just ignored until the bad lady “tricks” the hero in do her evil deeds for them. Which gets into the whole why force a character to forget something and tell the reader about it in a direct way that doesn’t give mystery just exasperation to the reader. Which doesn’t even give an reason for the villains choices,other than “I was born this way”?
Okay I’m done ranting, just better books and if you got time to kill don’t. Find something other than this to listen to.

Cute story ruined by brow beating misogyny

The “elf girl” started out as a strong character with potential and turned into a prude when their sex life didn’t need to be harped on over and over. Really undermines the power and pleasure of the series. Thankfully there narration is good.