Self-published Book Review: A History of Magic by Scott Robinson
I’m back from my failed Kickstarter, and I’ll be looking for more books to review soon. If you have any, send them my way.
A History of Magic is the second book in Scott Robinson’s series about Rawk, the last great hero. I reviewed the first novel, The Age of Heroes, two years ago here at Black Gate.
Rawk is retired, but that doesn’t stop the exots–exotic monsters from other worlds–from randomly appearing in his city of Katamood. Technically, this should be his friend Weaver’s problem, as he’s the prince of the city, but the city guard that Weaver employs can’t be everywhere at once. And if a monster appears right in front of Rawk, he has to fight it. It’s expected, to judge from the crowds that materialize whenever that happens. But Rawk is getting slower, and he can’t save everyone, not even his audience, which doesn’t always have the good sense to keep its distance.
New heroes have been showing up from all over the world to fight the monsters. But heroes are lazy sorts, and they tend to hang out in taverns waiting for word of the monsters to come to them, and only then head out to kill the beast and collect the bounty. And very few of them have any interest in finding out where the monsters are coming from and stopping it–that would cause the bounties to dry up quick.
It must be caused by sorcerers, to judge from the magical portals producing the monsters. Weaver’s solution would be to send his guards from door-to-door hunting down sorcerers–real or imagined–but Rawk would rather avoid that. So he recruits Sylvia, half-elven sorceress and former enemy, current healer, to help him out. Together, they track down various sorcerers who have little real magic between them, trying to discover who’s behind the exots. Clearly, none of these sorcerers could light a candle with magic on their own, but if enough of them worked together . . .
