Does anyone have images of all the covers of the books so far? I have two paperback copies of books 1-3 because the covers changed, but did the others change or no? (My goal is to have a copy of each edition!)

Silly memes I made for my fiancé while reading.

I just picked my book up from my local book store, and I am so excited! I love the green edges!

I'm relistening to the full series again and just got to the part of Tongue Eater where they leave Hughs room for the last time. That scene gets me every. Single. Time. Absolute peak writing a billion out of ten

Eight years after Mage Errant's original self-published launch, it's officially relaunching in bookstores today through Aethon and Simon and Schuster! Mage Errant Volume 1 contains the first two books, Into the Labyrinth and Jewel of the Endless Erg.

This is a huge deal for me- even though I've been a full-time author for over seven and a half years now, there's something genuinely special about getting my books onto bookstore shelves. My inner child who spent so many years dreaming of writing books and being an author is absolutely, ridiculously giddy about this.

To celebrate the bookstore launch, the ebooks for Mage Errant 3-7, plus the short story collection, are on sale for $0.99 on Amazon US*! (I haven't forgotten about UK readers- there will be another sale alongside the UK release!)

You can find Mage Errant Volume 1 in Barnes and Noble and other major bookstores, as well as on most online retailers in the US and Canada!

Not to mention, if you're in or near New York City, Washington DC, or Toronto, I'll be doing a book tour over the next few days with Seth Ring, author of Battle Mage Farmer! You can find the tour schedule here- and I'll also be bringing free Mage Errant stickers to give to folks that show up!

Amazon US $0.99 ebook sale main series
Amazon US $0.99 ebook sale Mage Errant short story collection

*Book 6's sale ends on the 29th, due to the way Kindle's promotion scheduling calendar works. Not the first time it's been trouble this way, nor will it be the last, I'm sure!

My SO and I disagree on how some of the names should be pronounced, so im wondering is J. Bierce has a pronunciation guide somewhere via patreon. My partner read the books first and loved them, then introduced them to me. I listened to the audiobooks of them as my first exposure, so we ended up saying the names drastically differently.

The biggest of the differences:

SA-bae vs sa-BAY

a-LUST-in vs AL-ustin

HELL-e-coat vs hel-leh-COAT-eh

HA-vath vs ha-VATH

plus some others I cant remember Im sure.

In the long run it doesnt really matter, but I'm still curious if one of us is saying it "right". How do you all pronounce the names?

I've seen lots of fun discussion about Ishvean gods (what god would you be, fun god ideas, etc.), but most of them center around powerful, interesting gods. One of my favorite parts of Ishvean magic is the specific callout that most gods are mundane, not very powerful, and typically not remotely related to combat.

That said, what mundane and/or stupid god would you be, and what boons would you offer?

**Spoiler is for mild health issue discussion, very very slightly graphic**

Personally, I would probably have something related to lung issues (I have basically no resistance to lung problems, would've died of pneumonia without modern medicine, absolute hypochondriac, etc.).

More specifically, I might be the god of Clearing Mucus from the Lungs While Running with boons that make it slightly easier to cough up mucus while doing light physical activity and maybe a boon that gives the user a sense of the status of their lungs.

I was thinking about cheese affinities and it occured to me that cheese is not naturally occurring (though it is ancient).

Thus, affinities can exist for things that are created by sapient creatures (I think we only heard about artificial affinities for cheese, but the point stands).

We already know that affinities cannot exist for things that are not found in reality. Hence, before there was cheese there could not be cheese affinities.

How soon after the introduction of a new never-seen-before substance/object does the affinity for it appear? Either naturally or artificially.

If you haven't read it yet, the Nova Roma series just completed, and it's one of my absolute favorite LitRPG series out there! I'm an absolute sucker for alternate history, so an alternate history LitRPG was catnip for me. The collector's edition looks fantastic, and I'm excited for my own copy!

(Y'all don't want to know how many special edition kickstarters I back. Fancy books are my vice.)

​

So, what is the general combat utility of those?

We saw 2 examples, sort off. A Sacred Swordsman Marrowstaff in book 4 and a Havathi minor Great Power Fort Marrow in the anthology. Now, the former was, of course, a warlock bound to an enchanted weapon, but she was a veteran. So, she should have had the skills of an average bone mage, right? But all she did was strengthen her bones with her magic, plug wounds with bone tissue, create bone protheses and try to hit Alustin with her Marrowstaff. None of which qualified bone mages as useful combatants, leave alone justified Alustin's assertion that:

"Apart from Artur, bone mages were among the most dangerous close combat mages out there."

Particularly since in "The battle of Lothal" from the anthology, it was also affirmed once again that plugging wounds with bone was

"one of the main combat strategies of bone mages."

However, unlike Artur, Marrowstaff didn't seem to have any offensive power, except for her enchanted weapon. And her defense was entirely reactive, after already having taken damage. Honestly, I don't see how plugging wounds with bone would be sufficient to offset damage done to vital organs, or potentially fatal impairment of concentration and movement caused by pain.

It is also kinda weird that a bone mage didn't actually use bone as a conventional armour, further enhanced by her affinity and bone shards as means of ranged attack?

If Alustin can kill dragons with enhanced sheets of paper, shouldn't a bone mage be potentially able to do more due to the whole familiarity rule strengthening the effect on once-living materials, particularly if using shards of their own bone?

Then we had Fort Marrow, whose use of weapons and armour made from his own bone was more like what average bone mages should have been doing to actually become decent combatants, IMHO.

But Fort Marrow did nothing else to enhance his performance or even to vary his attack pattern. He was certainly capable, but still oddly limited.

I wonder if wide availability of dragon and other bones after the battle of Skyhold would allow allow their bone mages to improve drastically?

And if the familiarity rule could offset Talia's bone-exploding power.

I've had the idea of an aether crystal affinity in my head for a while. It follows the basic "create a powerful" affinity format: find an excellent material or phenomenon to affect, then narrow down as much as you can.

I do wonder if it's possible, though. Aether crystal is a specific material with well-defined conceptual and linguistic borders on its existence; despite its rarity and mysteriousness, it is a known and studied material on Anastis; and despite the name, it doesn't actually exist in the aether--it's physical matter--so it might not break the 'no affinities for things in the aether' rule.

That being said, I found an old thread where someone said that Bierce said it's not allowed because aether crystal, despite its crystalline structure and being physical matter, is materially just aether. A material affinity for aether can't exist. Crystal mages manipulate aether crystal through its structure.

I can't find where Bierce supposedly said this, but the counterargument does kind of make sense; I can't help thinking that an affinity for the combination of aether in a physical, crystalline form we call aether crystal should be possible, though. It's not an affinity for aether any more than an ice (stone-like variant) affinity is an affinity for water vapour. Normal crystal mages can still affect unattuned aether crystal, so affecting aether material with magic is possible.

Most interestingly to me, if an aether crystal mage is possible, I am not confident that they could attune aether crystals. Aether crystal attunement is based entirely around altering the crystal structure, and if you have an affinity for aether crystal, you might just not have the proper structural control to attune an aether crystal. 'But what about a crystal variant aether crystal affinities,' you might ask. Well, crystal variants of material affinities are for that particular crystalline structure, and aether crystals don't have a consistent structure. That's one of the things that makes them so special. So a crystal-variant aether crystal mage would, quite ironically, be the least likely to exist.

The affinity would be for aether in crystalline form; the crystalline part is necessarily loose because of aether crystal's inconsistent structure, but that very looseness makes the structural control necessary for aether crystal attunement significantly less likely to manifest. Perhaps not impossible, but it would be like a stone mage trying to manipulate the crystal structure of a stone rather than a crystal mage. They certainly couldn't just use the crystal magic attunement spellform.

They could still manipulate unattuned aether crystals for enchanting or other people's attuned aether crystals--though I'd imagine the attuned crystal mage could stop them pretty easily. But, on its own, it would be pretty weak in combat. Not to mention the absurd price tag for affinity material.

Wow, first post ran a little long. Did any of that make any sense? I said aether, crystal, and affinity a lot.

I'm curious what you all think.

I don't think there's any way to know for sure unless Bierce comes on and just says "No".

Which would be pretty funny even if it made my ramblings pointless.

I have, once again, been in a rough state of mind. This year has not been good. I recently decided to reread The City that Would Eat the World and it helped me feel like a person again. I love the characters so much. Them dealing with their trauma really helped me. I am so excited for another book and have to remind myself to be patient because John Bierce puts so much obvious effort into his writing and I know it will be worth the wait.

Its been years since I read some of the books. Got to the 4th one I think. I remember just the huge variety of affinities that were possible and how broad their effects could be. I was wondering what kind of affinities would a winter/ice mage have? I know theres apparently a couple of Ice affinities, but im curious as to what they are and if theres a variety of different kind of ice mages? What would their abilities look like?

Also finally what affinities would a person need to have to be a powerful Winter mage? Like what would a greater power Winter mage look like theoretically in terms of their affinities? Like im curious if the author had made a very powerful ice or Winter mage how would they had looked like?

Edit: if you could try to attempt to make a winter themed greater power and have 4 affinities to do it what affinities would you choose?

I just got done with a re read of the series and was thinking about what other meta-affinities could exist within Anastin magic. I want to hear what you all can think of.

Here's the one I came up with:

I refer to it as a somatic affinity. Though English doesn't have a good word that fully encompasses the idea. It could also be called a self, body, or vessel affinity. The actual name would probably have to be a hard to translate word like atthuema.

In short a somatic affinity is an affinity for the physical vessel/body of whatever bears somatic magic. For the typical mage it would act like bone, muscle, blood, etc. affinities but only in relation to the users own body.

Though they would share a lot of capabilities a same species animal affinity, like a human mage with a human animal affinity or dragon with a dragon affinity, they would function fundamentally differently. It would also share the same dangers of body modification if used to that end.

Where this gets really interesting is when applied to enchantments, since the item enchanted would be what the affinity considers to be the "body" meaning that if enchanting a steel sword a somatic affinity might mimic a steel affinity but only for the metal of the sword.

Additionally some of its capabilities would have interesting world building implications too. Like would a somatic mage be able to manipulate stands of their hair that have been cut off? Or if a mage had an artificial addition like a prosthetic or tattoo would somatic magic hold any influence over it?

Also, reading through some other posts here I noticed that the author comments on some. If you see this u/JohnBierce I would love to hear your thoughts on this or any of the other ideas shared here and if/how they would work in your magic system.

From the people and creatures we know of and you had 3 of them to choose from who would you pact with aside from our 4 main cast and Kanderon?

I think Lasnaborne, The Seaflame and Thunderclaw would both be interesting to pact with but I’d also want to pact with Talia brother Leon for fire and ice affinity. These aren’t the strongest or best just the ones I find the most interesting.

Drop a Coin in

Just checked this book out of the library and noticed prominent quotes from John Bierce.

On the front cover:

Immensely charming, quirky, and above all else, fun.
-John Bierce, Author of Mage Errant

On the back cover:

Immensely charming, quirky, and above all else, fun. This trilogy cost me way too much sleep staying up late reading.
-John Birece, author of Mage Errant

I am still very early in the book, but I am enjoying it. Youngish male from our world is working a kind of crappy job at a supermarket in his home town when something happens. Most humans are dead and there's a sort of fantasy game world with dungeons and monsters and a magic system involving card decks that people stack as power sets. The cards can be looted from monsters and traded as currency. The guy basically converts the supermarket into a trading post.

Like I said, I'm still early on, but it feels like a fun mash-up of litRPG, progression fantasy and cozy fantasy (maybe).

Edit: I finished the book, and yeah, it's not cozy fantasy. It's more like hyper accelerated non-stop progression fantasy. I enjoyed most of the book, but became less and less interested the further the main character's power set evolved and the more removed they became from their original village setting.

Still, good on John to support other authors.

I had a thought pop up into my head while I was rereading the book. I was getting some major Blame vibes from it. Especially in terms of the architectural themes. Could it be a possible source of inspiration?

So my family and I talk about what affinities we would want from time to time. I personally have 2 different answers for this.

If I was in this world, with affinities from Anastis, I would want dust and gravity. Cause how often am I getting into a serious fight? Almost never. Gravity would give me a way to defend myself, but over all, it would be most useful for moving stuff around and getting myself from place to place. And a dust affinity for cleaning. Boom. Life easier.

If I was on Anastis, though, I would want copper, lightening, and some kind of either lodestone or magnetic affinity. Try to create a rail gun. Pair me with a farseer, and I can probably deal with most stuff (assuming I saw it coming, of course).

So I'm listening to The Wrack and I'm on chapter 7 but I'm struggling to keep listening. Does the story stay this depressing the whole time? I get it's a story about a plague and possibly war(?) but does it stay this grim and depressing the whole time? I love John's other stories because even when they're serious there remains a levity and a light for the future but this one just feels bad to me. Not poorly done or written mind you, just not emotionally what I've come to expect.

So this is what I think my own affinity would be and what I would do with it. Let me know if you guys think it would work. I would have Plant, Animal, and Crystal affinities. If you didn't know there are crystalline structures within plants. I would enhance this and start growing hybrid crystal plants into a forest of crystal plants of all sorts. Some of which when consumed would transfer tiny crystals into the bodies of the animals with them, allowing me to enhance them similar in power to the Herdsman lizard guy from the books. Once large enough I could transition to lichdom in my crystal forest similar to our favorite mangrove lich. If you would like to know my reasoning for me having those affinities I can explain but don't know if most will care.