Official Review: Wizard Science by Alan Mackie
Posted: 03 Jul 2014, 16:01
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Wizard Science" by Alan Mackie.]
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This book is another difficult book for me to review because it has so much potential, but has some fundamental things that are lacking.
Wizard Science by Alan Mackie follows a boy named Joshua who has just moved to a city/town named Suddall. His beloved dog, Rex, has just been killed and Joshua is devastated. While going to a garage sale to take his mind off his dog's death, he unconsciously picks up a book. A mysterious old woman tells him to keep it and says that "books, like pets, choose their owners". This book, however, is different. It's a book on how to be a wizard. It provides explanations of dark matter and dark energy in the universe and says that these are the basis for both creation magic and destruction magic.
Joshua begins his training to be a wizard. However, he is basically a failure. He humiliates himself by eating rotten vegetables in an attempt to enter the animalistic state of mind, yet he is unable to. After training for a few days and due to desperation, he manages to quickly pick up destruction and creation magic. However he has little control over his powers and his powers are far from the great wizards that currently teach him.
Joshua is prophesied to kill the Master of Mayhem, a powerful rogue wizard who plans on killing all the wizards, enslaving human society, and becoming a god. Josh continues to train. However his world is turned upside down when the Master of Mayhem captures his entire town's people as well as all the powerful wizards of the world. Joshua seeks out the Master of Mayhem, but is captured and taken to the Master of Mayhem's prison camp. Luckily they do not know his identity and Josh embarks to defeat the almighty Master of Mayhem.
This book was unfortunately a disappointment for me. Some of the ideas were interesting such as how dark matter and dark energy shaped the way this type of magic worked. However, the first flaw is how simplistic the magic system is. There are literally two phrases. One to destroy and one to create, with little control over what is destroyed or created. Secondly, the writing is INCREDIBLY clunky and awkward. It honestly sounded like the author was trying too hard. Especially for the Master of Mayhem dialogue, he tried to make the Master of Mayhem sound very tough and badass, but it just fell flat. There's also some extremely weird dialogue such as when Josh asks his mother for some books to cover the fact he's studying wizard magic, his mother says "I am so impressed". It's very difficult to describe it, but the flow is not good and makes for difficult reading. The descriptions and dialogue are clunky and there are some very strange similes and metaphors that are very jarring. There are a lot of grammatical and spelling mistakes as well. There are countless missing commas and many comma splices, which again made for some difficult reading.
The overall book also was very cliche to me. Boy is prophesied to save the world. Boy is no where near as good as the evil wizard who wants to take over the earth. Boy somehow defeats the wizard through luck. While it follows this sort of archetype, it did it in a very boring fashion. There are some books that also do this but do it less obviously which makes the book interesting to read (ie Percy Jackson series). However this book was just so blatant about it that it was not enjoyable to read. The reason I was disappointed in this book was because I see a lot of potential in it. The idea of basing the magic system on dark energy and dark matter is a good one. There were some nice twists towards the end. Some of the characters created were quite solid and decently original. However, there are too many flaws in the writing itself and the plot is just too predictable. The ending scene where he battles the Master of Mayhem wasn't even entertaining, and was finished before it started. It was so anti-climatic and was honestly the final straw for me. I'm going to give it a 2 out of 4 stars simply because while I liked some of the ideas present, there were too many fundamental flaws.
***
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Wizard Science by Alan Mackie follows a boy named Joshua who has just moved to a city/town named Suddall. His beloved dog, Rex, has just been killed and Joshua is devastated. While going to a garage sale to take his mind off his dog's death, he unconsciously picks up a book. A mysterious old woman tells him to keep it and says that "books, like pets, choose their owners". This book, however, is different. It's a book on how to be a wizard. It provides explanations of dark matter and dark energy in the universe and says that these are the basis for both creation magic and destruction magic.
Joshua begins his training to be a wizard. However, he is basically a failure. He humiliates himself by eating rotten vegetables in an attempt to enter the animalistic state of mind, yet he is unable to. After training for a few days and due to desperation, he manages to quickly pick up destruction and creation magic. However he has little control over his powers and his powers are far from the great wizards that currently teach him.
Joshua is prophesied to kill the Master of Mayhem, a powerful rogue wizard who plans on killing all the wizards, enslaving human society, and becoming a god. Josh continues to train. However his world is turned upside down when the Master of Mayhem captures his entire town's people as well as all the powerful wizards of the world. Joshua seeks out the Master of Mayhem, but is captured and taken to the Master of Mayhem's prison camp. Luckily they do not know his identity and Josh embarks to defeat the almighty Master of Mayhem.
This book was unfortunately a disappointment for me. Some of the ideas were interesting such as how dark matter and dark energy shaped the way this type of magic worked. However, the first flaw is how simplistic the magic system is. There are literally two phrases. One to destroy and one to create, with little control over what is destroyed or created. Secondly, the writing is INCREDIBLY clunky and awkward. It honestly sounded like the author was trying too hard. Especially for the Master of Mayhem dialogue, he tried to make the Master of Mayhem sound very tough and badass, but it just fell flat. There's also some extremely weird dialogue such as when Josh asks his mother for some books to cover the fact he's studying wizard magic, his mother says "I am so impressed". It's very difficult to describe it, but the flow is not good and makes for difficult reading. The descriptions and dialogue are clunky and there are some very strange similes and metaphors that are very jarring. There are a lot of grammatical and spelling mistakes as well. There are countless missing commas and many comma splices, which again made for some difficult reading.
The overall book also was very cliche to me. Boy is prophesied to save the world. Boy is no where near as good as the evil wizard who wants to take over the earth. Boy somehow defeats the wizard through luck. While it follows this sort of archetype, it did it in a very boring fashion. There are some books that also do this but do it less obviously which makes the book interesting to read (ie Percy Jackson series). However this book was just so blatant about it that it was not enjoyable to read. The reason I was disappointed in this book was because I see a lot of potential in it. The idea of basing the magic system on dark energy and dark matter is a good one. There were some nice twists towards the end. Some of the characters created were quite solid and decently original. However, there are too many flaws in the writing itself and the plot is just too predictable. The ending scene where he battles the Master of Mayhem wasn't even entertaining, and was finished before it started. It was so anti-climatic and was honestly the final straw for me. I'm going to give it a 2 out of 4 stars simply because while I liked some of the ideas present, there were too many fundamental flaws.
***
Buy "Wizard Science" on Amazon
