JasperKazai’s Reviews > Mana Master > Status Update

I had spent too much time on this crap to drop it, but I was super checked out. So I went into skim mode and just got it over with. What a terrible book. Some neat surface level ideas that never get explained satisfactorily, and are glued together with inexpert writing. There's very little to like here. I definitely have no plans to continue this series, and not sure if I want to read this author again period.

Even the elders of the sects resort to violence against one another at the slightest provocation. This is absolutely stupid.
This feels like a middle schooler wrote it. There are some neat ideas here, but it's all surface level. The sects basically just have a style of appearance and that's it. Everyone, from teenagers to elderly adults, act like children. The magic makes barely any sense. This is awful

They go to a stadium to watch/participate in a tournament, and people in the stands are literally physically fighting each other with magic, purely to get better seats. So everyone in this universe sucks and is a fucking moron. Got it. This society would've collapsed already. Everyone is an idiot

Isaac is spotted by an antagonist he had a previous altercation with. The guy starts getting ready to attack Isaac, in the middle of a restaurant. The restaurant owner steps in and forbids fighting, so the villain dude instead begins to attack the COMPLETELY INNOCENT restaurant owner. All because how dare he try and prevent violence. It's a completely indefensible course of actions. Nuance, what's that?

It's like he wrote an outline, then barely filled in the points in between. Isaac is trained by his father, but it lasts for maybe all of 3 pages. Then his father abruptly says 'alright we're done, now I must go on a journey, farewell.' WTF?! And so many concepts are thrown around with barely any explanation. He shattered his meridians and had to repair them. Ok? What the fuck does that mean? How did it even happen?

Something that most of these trash books do, this one has already done multiple times and I'm only halfway, is have boring antagonists that act with zero nuance. They're comically villainous, being prejudiced to an absurd degree and often resorting to violence with little provocation. Even minor antagonists are doing this. It's so dull when the hero is ALWAYS in the right, completely unambiguous. Lazy writing.

I was thinking it was improving a bit, and then it shit the bed again. It casually skips four days in the middle of scene like it's no big deal. That's terrible writing. Then Isaac casually finds an artifact sword and that's also no big deal apparently. Oh, and this fox creature is absolutely going to become a foxgirl soon.
I don't know. It just isn't that good. Probably will finish at this point, but eh

That might have been the most poorly-written fight scene I've ever read. A younger man was more powerful than they first guessed, but then he took too long to charge a spell up and Isaac just cut his head off without any issue. Even though they had been more than evenly matched just seconds beforehands. THEN, to top it off, Michelle flippantly talks about having sex later, moments after having been almost raped. WTF

Ah yes, the classic 'put one of the love interests in danger of potential sexual assault so the protagonist has to go save her.' How droll.
He spelled twerp as twirp. I was going to make fun of how he doesn't know how to spell twerp, but apparently twirp is an actual valid lesser-used spelling of it. Huh. Still weird.

Isaac has thought multiple times about how he's unwilling to push his relationship w/ Aurora forward b/c he's unsure if she has complete free will, due to their magic bond. But he refuses to actually speak with her about it; he thinks it then moves on. Just a way for the author to artificially postpone the sex.
Regardless of that, he sure has no qualms about getting handsy with her. Pulling her into hugs quite often.