The Stranded

Mystic Albion, Book 1

By: Christopher G. Nuttall

Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld

Centuries ago, the magic left our world...

The magicians went with it, stepping into the Gates to Mystic Albion and leaving OldeWorld—Earth—forever. Since then, the two worlds have remained separate, until now.

Three young magicians, experimenting with dangerous spells, find themselves accidentally transported to the world their ancestors fled. Finding friends and allies, they try to blend in as they struggle to find a way back to their home, unaware that danger lurks in the shadows of a very alien world...

...And that they are already running out of time.

©2022 Christopher G. Nuttall (P)2023 Podium Audio

Recommended

It's a great book, definitely recommend.
it has its reference to Harry Potter, but runs it in a different direction.

if you've read Schooled in Magic and liked it this is definitely a fine addition for you.

I hope it continues with a second book, with there's "clean up"

Slow series start

This might be more of a 2.5 star read than a full 3 stars, but I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt.

More than four centuries ago, with magic disappearing from the world, Anne Boleyn makes a promise that opens gates to a magical world. Today, young people at a magic school in that world reopen one of those gates and find themselves in the dystopian hellscape of a particularly bad English council-estate school.

This is a dark-academia-adjacent urban fantasy, that, like many of Nuttall's series, starts a bit slowly. The character work is mostly believable for the ages of the main characters (late high school in US terms), and their dynamics feel appropriate for the kind of deeply dysfunctional society portrayed here.

The antagonist characters are very flat and serve principally as foils for the protagonists. There isn't much attempt to give interesting personalities or motives to the enemies.

The plot moves quickly, but sometimes that is to the detriment of story engagement. Some of the action moves so fast as to break my suspension of disbelief. I don't really believe the speed at which the Earth-native characters pick up magical skills, for instance.

The world of the council estate is somewhere in between things like Clockwork Orange and To Sir With Love: disengaged and despairing youths and rampant violence of all types. I don't know how true to life this is, but in the world of fiction, it's at least plausible.

Overall, if it weren't for my other experiences with Nuttall's writing, I might stop this series here. There are definitely flaws in this book. But he has been able to develop other series from slow starts into stories that I really enjoy, so I'll be continuing this one.

never disappointing

I love the schooled in magic series. and I hope that this spin off has more coming in it. I keep checking every month to see if there is any pre orders available lol 😆 I'm addicted if he writes more he has my money 💰

Authors War on Our World

overall, there's decent world building and fantasy here, and in the beginning, there's a nice balance but the author nose dives into steep social commentary, everyone in our world are depressed terrible monsters and our world has no redeeming qualities, to the author everyone is either a rapist, so sad and depressed they're gonna kill themselves and everywhere is disgusting to the author, im halfway through and im really trying hard to push through because the actual story is good, but every 5 minutes the author gets on a soap box about social commentary and it just pulls you out of the story, really tough to get through, it's like getting a steak and every other bite is really hard to chew fat, unfortunate there was real potential here; but everyone on old world are monsters so I guess I'll go be a monster with another book, I really kept waiting for the author to show good people and art and other great things but no they have a very pointed mission with this book and it has nothing to do with fantasy.

Christopher is prolific

This guy is my favorite author. If you have read, school didn’t magic, there are 20 books were the star of the book. Emily comes from our world and goes into a fantasy. World stranded is now the opposite of that it’s great beautiful world building along with social commentary, that makes you think, but doesn’t jam it down your throat well done I highly recommend it