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Starch's Reviews > Mother of Learning: ARC 1
Mother of Learning: ARC 1
by
by
A simple, fun read. Perfect for turning your brain off and enjoying the show. Just don't expect anything more.
If you are at all familiar with role-playing games / video-games and with Harry Potter, you will find little new in the worldbuilding of Mother of Learning. Add to that the fact that both the time travel mechanic and the circumstances that lead to it are suspiciously similar to All You Need Is Kill (adapted to cinema as Edge of Tomorrow), and the result is a story which feels very familiar in every respect.
Still, there is value here. The story is fun and at times interesting, and the character of Zorian, while too much of an archetype, is mostly well written.
But there are issues with Zorian's relation to the plot: while he is presented as fairly above average when it comes to intelligence, he misses several extremely obvious plot-points, and fails to consider obvious courses of action when facing his problems. He's also surprised to learn things he should have known already (e.g. a character describes the type of magic he is using, and later on Zorian is surprised when told the type of the magic that was used). This happens several times, and feels like the author wishes to give hints to what happened and then have Zorian figure it out, only his "hints" are the equivalent of revealing the solution to the reader, making Zorian appear very unintelligent. It gets worse to the point of having a character say: "Watch out for X doing Y, because it means Z", and then a few chapters later Zorian sees X doing Y, and wonders in length as to why they did it and if there is a reason for it.
The overall feel of the world and character practically screams "generic". There are a lot of subplots about the intricacies of the magic system, and while there is a lot of information to learn about the system, it is quite unoriginal and completely shallow. It feels like reading the manual of an overly-complex (while not deep) RPG's mechanics. The magic seems very varied and flexible, but people keep resorting to bombs/fire/energy-beams instead of coming up with unique spells -- which we know is possible, because these do come up when the author decides it. Most battles are just people trowing colored light at each other.
The characters are all have their own quirks, but are otherwise rather shallow. They might be smart/stupid/strong/friendly/annoying, but are rarely explored holistically as people. Many of the adults talk like teenagers, and vice versa. The spiders seem to have been superficially inspired by Children of Time (though that may be because it's the only other book I read to specify these things about them). They also seem much too human in their behavior and constantly providing exposition.
There are many such cases of badly delivered exposition throughout the book, including enemies telling each other things both of them already know in a crude attempt to inform the reader, or characters speaking their thoughts out loud at times where it makes no sense for them to do so.
The plot, the characters, and the world are all simple and too unoriginal, taking no risks and attempting nothing of real value. Then again, when viewed as a book meant to be simple fun and nothing more, there's enough to enjoy here for the read to be worth the time spent.
As is usually with such stories, much of the magical mechanics revolve around "the soul", without ever defining what the word means (even just in the context of this story). The book is as far from a philosophy book as one can be, yet the discussions of souls is hilariously similar to actual discussions I've heard: people talk about it as if everyone know what it means, so no one has to say what it means; it hosts the mind but is not the mind (?); it is immortal but anything about it can be changed (??); it can be harmed to the point of not functioning (???).
The audiobook might just be the strangest one I've ever listened to. My first reaction was "this is terrible", as the narrator is overly theatrical and expressive in every aspect of his narration (to the point of making decisions regarding emphasis and pronunciation that were almost definitely not intended by the author), but as time went on I found myself fascinated by it. A clear advantage here is how the narrator kept me engaged for the entire length of the book (while other, "better" narrators had failed this in the past). And with time, I got used to the quirks of the narration until they didn't bother me at all anymore. One lesson from this audiobook, though: when a character makes a loud screeching noise, I don't want to actually hear a loud screeching noise.
If you are at all familiar with role-playing games / video-games and with Harry Potter, you will find little new in the worldbuilding of Mother of Learning. Add to that the fact that both the time travel mechanic and the circumstances that lead to it are suspiciously similar to All You Need Is Kill (adapted to cinema as Edge of Tomorrow), and the result is a story which feels very familiar in every respect.
Still, there is value here. The story is fun and at times interesting, and the character of Zorian, while too much of an archetype, is mostly well written.
But there are issues with Zorian's relation to the plot: while he is presented as fairly above average when it comes to intelligence, he misses several extremely obvious plot-points, and fails to consider obvious courses of action when facing his problems. He's also surprised to learn things he should have known already (e.g. a character describes the type of magic he is using, and later on Zorian is surprised when told the type of the magic that was used). This happens several times, and feels like the author wishes to give hints to what happened and then have Zorian figure it out, only his "hints" are the equivalent of revealing the solution to the reader, making Zorian appear very unintelligent. It gets worse to the point of having a character say: "Watch out for X doing Y, because it means Z", and then a few chapters later Zorian sees X doing Y, and wonders in length as to why they did it and if there is a reason for it.
The overall feel of the world and character practically screams "generic". There are a lot of subplots about the intricacies of the magic system, and while there is a lot of information to learn about the system, it is quite unoriginal and completely shallow. It feels like reading the manual of an overly-complex (while not deep) RPG's mechanics. The magic seems very varied and flexible, but people keep resorting to bombs/fire/energy-beams instead of coming up with unique spells -- which we know is possible, because these do come up when the author decides it. Most battles are just people trowing colored light at each other.
The characters are all have their own quirks, but are otherwise rather shallow. They might be smart/stupid/strong/friendly/annoying, but are rarely explored holistically as people. Many of the adults talk like teenagers, and vice versa. The spiders seem to have been superficially inspired by Children of Time (though that may be because it's the only other book I read to specify these things about them). They also seem much too human in their behavior and constantly providing exposition.
There are many such cases of badly delivered exposition throughout the book, including enemies telling each other things both of them already know in a crude attempt to inform the reader, or characters speaking their thoughts out loud at times where it makes no sense for them to do so.
The plot, the characters, and the world are all simple and too unoriginal, taking no risks and attempting nothing of real value. Then again, when viewed as a book meant to be simple fun and nothing more, there's enough to enjoy here for the read to be worth the time spent.
As is usually with such stories, much of the magical mechanics revolve around "the soul", without ever defining what the word means (even just in the context of this story). The book is as far from a philosophy book as one can be, yet the discussions of souls is hilariously similar to actual discussions I've heard: people talk about it as if everyone know what it means, so no one has to say what it means; it hosts the mind but is not the mind (?); it is immortal but anything about it can be changed (??); it can be harmed to the point of not functioning (???).
The audiobook might just be the strangest one I've ever listened to. My first reaction was "this is terrible", as the narrator is overly theatrical and expressive in every aspect of his narration (to the point of making decisions regarding emphasis and pronunciation that were almost definitely not intended by the author), but as time went on I found myself fascinated by it. A clear advantage here is how the narrator kept me engaged for the entire length of the book (while other, "better" narrators had failed this in the past). And with time, I got used to the quirks of the narration until they didn't bother me at all anymore. One lesson from this audiobook, though: when a character makes a loud screeching noise, I don't want to actually hear a loud screeching noise.
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