Reviews of The Unsuspecting Mage: The Morcyth Saga Book One

This was a great book and had an interesting story line BUT the first person view and present tense verbs were driving me crazy midway through. I would love to read the rest of the series because the story line, characters, and plot are very enjoyable but since the book does not flow easily for me with the present tense used I may have to read them in short doses.

I found the book as a free download on nook and truly enjoyed reading it, and am looking forward to reading the remainder of the series. That said I would like to point out that I felt that the character could have been developed a bit further,and I hope that this character development happens later in the series

The book is very enjoyable. Interesting plot although a lot of the things that happen seem to have little to do with James's quest to discover why he was brought to this world and the purpose of the amulet that he is given. I assume that their purpose will pop up in later books of the series. While the writing style of the book flows well, I found it a little distracting that the author has the main character do something then has him tell one of the other characters what he just did. I thought he did a great job of relating how a novice discovers that he can perform magic and gradually learns to control it more and more. I'm already starting Book 2 of the series.

I couldn't read more than four chapters. Seems like the story is in par with any good fantasy, but the viewpoint writing took the fun out of it for me. It's not the way I am used to reading with this type of book. I still highly recommend downloading and reading it. Brain obviously put a lot of time and effort to create the series. If you have no issues in the way he wrote the book, then get the whole series.

I give him four stars for story creation. written in the third person would have won him all five.

As posted on my Facebook page:

I just finished this first of eight books by Brian S Pratt that was for offer at the Smashwords website. So far the selections at Smashwords have been a whole lot of miss but this is a hit. Provided for free under the guise that all following books are charged for, the story is simple in the simple RPG format. The writing is simple and easy to read. While the writing is easy enough to read, you get the sense that somebody better at writing English is tutting at the prose, but it is a light enough touch that you can still enjoy the story.

Given an interest in middle fantasy, and an social repressed teen magically transported to a magical land, the story picks on the path of finding his way through a strange land. Characters come and go, each adding a small part to the hint that there will be an overreaching story yet to be seen.

I saw that the author has managed at least eight books, so what has been hinted to, clearly will be delivered over time. So if this sounds interesting, come look at the free edition at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1444.

This is a very good series. I have read all 7 of this series, the first book of the sequel Travail series, and am anxiously awaiting the publication of the next book.

I agree that there are some slow spots, but overall this is a very engaging and visual series. It really creates imagery as you read it, and the action just gets more and more intense as the book goes on. In the other books it gets *really* intense as well.

I cannot imagine trying to review a book after only reading a few pages, so I am unsure how some of the one or no-star reviewers are coming up with their opinions of this book.

I think it is obvious by many of the comments (such as improper use of amber alert) that many people have not even read the book carefully at all. Do not care for this type of genre, or for some reason just want to post something negative.

If you like fantasy books (like Weis / Hickman type stuff, etc.) then you will LOVE this in my personal opinion.

Hey it's free. Give it a read and definitely read it for more than a few pages lol. You will find that you will be purchasing the next one... then the next one... just like I did.

If you must defer to proper grammar and sentence structure to create a comfortable reading environment for yourself, then this is not for you.

I give this book 4 stars only because there are others in this series that I think are better written as far as keeping the reader engaged in the story. Keep in mind that this is a *series* so after reading it just imagine how good the others get!

The style takes some getting used to at first, since it's all in the present tense instead of the usual past tense for fantasy novels; so he goes, sees, says, asks, hollers, rides, camps, fights, etc.

The story is mysterious and many questions aren't answered, so the main character doesn't know why he is taken to the fantasy world, or what exactly it is he's supposed to do there. So he travels in search of answers, but instead finds himself in trouble at pretty much every corner.

Although the book is free, the ending is a total cliffhanger so if you enjoyed it at all, you're basically forced to buy the next book as well. I ended up buying the entire series after finishing the second book.

The only thing I can criticize about this story is that it gets a bit too repetitive sometimes; ride, fight, camp, ride, fight, ...

This is a fun and exciting story following a teenager as he falls into a world of magic. My main problem is not with the cliche plot, but with the authors tendancy to get caught up in inconsequential details. I felt like yelling at my screen "who cares about money, get on with the story". But aside form a few flaws it was an extremly entertaining story.

Average across all scores (full review at www.ileandraXraven.co.uk) comes to 3 stars exactly.

This is one of those cases in which the merits of the book lie in it’s potential rather than what it actually achieved. There is so much scope here to do more and though that wasn’t achieved, the book was enjoyable and I don’t regret having read it.

I’m not sure if I’ll be going on the read the others in the series, but at least, for now, I’m happy that I’ve read this one.

I thought the first book was interesting enough: however, I have zero intention of spending upwards of $60.00 to read the rest of it. It simply wasn't that good. The rest of the series are priced too high for self-published, half-edited pulp fiction. Get over yourself.