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The Blacksmith's Son

Mageborn, Book 1

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The Blacksmith's Son

By: Michael G. Manning
Narrated by: Alex Wyndham
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Summary

Mordecai’s simple life as the son of a blacksmith is transformed by the discovery of his magical birthright.

As he journeys to understand the power within him he is drawn into a dangerous plot to destroy the Duke of Lancaster and undermine the Kingdom of Lothion. Love and treachery combine to embroil him in events he was never prepared to face. What he uncovers will change his understanding of the past, and alter the future of those around him.

©2022 Michael G. Manning (P)2022 Podium Audio Action & Adventure Coming of Age Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction
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I am enjoying the first of Mageborn series having listened to the Art of Adept series but I am sad to say the narrator is driving me up the wall. He accentuates every vowel so long becomes looong , again becomes aaagain and soo on. Once you have heard it you can’t unhear it and it’s very off putting!

Enjoyed the storyline

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Outstanding book cannot wait to sink my teeth into another universe created by Manning.

Onwards!!!!

Amazing

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I've listened to first 3 books in Manning's Art of the Adept series and I must say that while I did enjoy those books Mageborn almost feels like it was written by a completely different person. There's a lot more humor here and the dialogue is written in such a way that the characters feel a lot more real than they do in Art of the Adept.

First of all I'm happy that the first book in it's entirety is mainly about the main character understanding who he really is and the entire book is spent in the castle he goes to with his friend at the very start, as a result the story doesn't feel incredibly rushed like it does in most stories like this.

If you're like me you'd probably expect for the main character to be forced into some extremely dangerous escape from the castle, chased by assassins within the first 3 hours and then he gets saved by some great old wizard in the forest who will train him by the end of the book. That's how most books like this would go but not here, that's not what Manning wanted for this series and I'm so pleased by the first entry that I immediately bought the second one.

Also it's pretty refreshing to listen to fantasy books that aren't at least 20 hours long for once. That said considering how short the first few books are it would be nice if we could buy the whole thing in 2 parts. The entire series is about 60 hours long so I feel like it wouldn't be unreasonable to combine the first 3 books into one collection and do the same with last 2 books.

That said if the first book is any indication of quality then I'll gladly spend that money and I'll probably end up going through Champions and Embers of Illeniel as well. Those two series are the main reason why I brought up how expensive this could get because I'm looking at a reading order of 11 books. I'm not sure about Riven Gates yet but Embers of Illeniel is what I'm really excited about so I'm starting here with Mageborn.

If you wanna get into the series as a whole this is the reading order as recommended by the author: Entire Mageborn series, Embers 1, Champions 1, Embers 2, Champions 2, Embers 3 and Champions 3 followed by Riven Gates series.

Well written,fun and superbly narrated story

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Really enjoyed the story, although it was a bit short and felt a little rushed, so 4 out of 5. The narrator had increadibly good voices for the characters and in that respect is one of the best I've heard in my huge library, HOWEVER, when he was just narrating the monologue and not putting on a characters voice, his voice sounded like AI, being completely flat until the last word of each sentence which he drawled out and raised pitch in a truly irritating way, and he read far to quickly as if rushing,, but as his character voices were so amazing I will still give him 4 out of 5, rather than 1 out of 5 for the narration.
Highly recommend the Art of the Adebt books by the same author as those rank in my top 5 of all time of thousands.

Story great although a bit short, narrator mixed

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I was gripped from start to finish! I’ll definitely be reading the entire series! I can’t recall enough.

Fantastic read

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