What I'm Reading: Magic and Bullets
Book 2 of Academy of Outcasts delivers more swashbuckling fun
LitRPG and its cousin progression fantasy aren’t really my bag, but I have found a few exceptions here and there. One of those is Larry Correia’s Academy of Outcasts series from Aethon. The first one was so much fun that I pre-ordered Magic and Bullets, which is something that I rarely do, and it went to the top of my TBR.
Oz Carnavon has been left in charge of the newly established Academy of Outcasts while their sponsor Gaul Haddar travels the realms hunting pirates. Things are not going as well as he’d hoped. He’s managed to attract a motley crew of would-be student wizards, but no instructors or testers who would help them advance. For now, they’re sharing the few spells they have between them and trying to teach themselves.
They’re surviving until a retinue from the local mob, the Latrocinium, shows up at their doorstep demanding an extortionate amount of rent for them to stay in the crumbling, fallen tower that they’ve taken as their home. The Latros’ leader, the half-elf Carcalla, believes that Oz and his band are trying to establish a rival gang in the Under Slump. While Carnavon manages to mostly convince the mob boss that they’re not, there’s still the matter of the rent. Carcalla offers them an alternative to his price — they can become adventurers in his employ and bring him treasures, starting with a lamp that’s imbued with a large amount of the most rare and precious element, Permanence.
It’s not a great option. Adventurers typically die quick and violent deaths, but it’s either that or tuck their tails and give up, which Oz can’t bring himself to do after working so hard to realize his dreams.
One reason these books work for me where others in the genre don’t is that the progression element comes a distant second to the story, and I never feel like it’s a report of something happening in a game. Yes, Oz and his friends are going to go up ranks with each book, and most of what they do is working toward that goal. But the focus rests on character, plot, and fun.
Correia isn’t trying to write the sprawling epic here (he did that with Saga of the Forgotten Warrior). It’s a light adventure story with a colorful cast of characters — even the secondary ones. Yeah, it’s easy to root for Oz, and if you don’t like Trax, I question whether or not you have a sense of humor at all, but even some minor characters become endearing without seeming to try. Very mild spoiler here: There’s a death in the book of a character that we barely know. It wasn’t exactly devastating, but I thought, “damn, that sucks, I liked his dumb ass.”
At the end of the day, Magic and Bullets, just like its predecessor, is 400 pages of fast-paced fun. Sometimes you just need a swashbuckling adventure story with non-stop action, and that’s what this one delivers.