Full transparency: I’m the Director of Publicity for Aethon Books. However, this review is 100% honest, unbiased, and based solely on my reading experience.
Synopsis:
All Oz Carnavon ever wanted was to become a master mage.
Except, to do so requires the natural gifts or wealth necessary to secure an appointment to one of the prestigious magical academies in the Core City at the center of the seven realms. Oz had neither.
He was born without magical talent, serving in the elemental plane of fire, a nightmarish hellscape of treacherous lava and vicious monsters, where life is cheap, and escape is rare. But Carnavons never give up.
When Oz fakes his death to get out of his family’s contract and crosses the Nexus gate to sneak into the Core, everything seems to be going according to plan. Until he gets blamed for an assassination attempt on the fire realm’s ambassador.
Now, Oz must become a fugitive in a vast magical city, while trying to earn a place among the magical academies which have nothing but disdain for his kind.
And the clock is ticking, because in one week, the most dangerous wizard in the realm of fire is coming to track him down and drag him back to hell.
Full Review:
What a fun adventure!
Having read Son of the Black Sword, I went into this expecting similarly dark fantasy. What I got instead was a surprisingly upbeat, optimistic, and enjoyable story that felt exactly like a D&D campaign come to life.
Academy of Outcasts follows Oz, a young miner from the fire elemental plane of Fogo. He is a miner collecting Red, the element that generates fire magic. He believes he has the ability to use Red to do magic, and so he practices in secret to develop his gifts—which very nearly has terrible consequences for all involved. But when a pirate attack threatens the crew of the barge he’s protecting, his magic and ingenuity comes in handy to save the day.
Alas, his parents die in the attack, so he swears himself to A) gaining in magical strength so he can B) get vengeance against the pirate crew. This leads him to escape his home plane and make his way to the central “hub world” where all the magical academies are.
Inevitably, a nobody from the plane of fire has no chance of getting into the prestigious academies. Despite his rejection, he’s got the persistence to keep trying, and the optimism to believe he can succeed though failure seems all but certain. His keeping on leads to all sorts of adventures—assassination attempts, spectacular magical battles, run-ins with cutthroats and slavers, and more—but also leads him to find companions-at-arms.
This is where Academy of Outcasts truly shines. While Oz is an easy enough character to follow—likeable, determined, clever, and dedicated—it’s the supporting characters that really ended up hooking me. Particularly Trax, the shark-like creature that feels like a cross between Reichis from Spellslinger and Bruce from Finding Nemo.
The story moves along at a steady clip, enjoyable from start to finish, and sets up many more adventures ahead. The world was richly detailed but never got bogged down in excessive exposition, lore, history, or culture. Really, it was just a beautifully easy read that kept me reading “just one more chapter” more than once.
If you want something light and easy to get into, or you’re new to fantasy and don’t want an overly complex doorstopper, Academy of Outcasts is a read I definitely recommend for you.
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