Alternative Titles include: I’ve Eaten Sandwiches Smaller Than This Book, Into the Rabbit Hole and Yes, I study full time whilst saving the GOD DAMN WORLD.
I read the first book in the Arcane Ascension series last year on a whim (I had it free on Kindle!) and thoroughly enjoyed it. It presented a world that was an interesting blend of LitRPG, Various Cultures and GIANT TOWERS OF UNKNOWABLE POWER. All set to the background of Corin Cadence (our protagonist) and his allies/team/frenemies (delete as appropriate) studying at school.
So like Harry Potter, but with an extremely defined magical system.
So, I’ll recap the first book. Corin has an older brother who went missing. Corin goes into tower to get power and look for brother. Corin, as most protagonists do, messes things up in there. Also he’s given a (combat-wise) weak power of Enchanting. He goes to school where the academically weakest are siphoned off and the strongest… get to join the military. I know I’m Doing My Part! Along his journey in the first book, Corin foils some plans, meets a visage (messenger of the Gods) and a possible demi-God. He learns that the guy he loves kinda wants to kill him and his brother is alive.
All in all, the first book was meaty. Packed. It was over 600 pages and each page had some piece of information or character discussion, either about the world, various factions’ motivations or the magic system. The magic system is marmite. Either you love it because of all the fiddly parts or you go “BOOOORING, GET ON WITH THE PLOT!” – I clicked with the system because it reminded me of my days playing D&D 3.5e and trying to find all the cool combos with my mates.
Writing wise and even plot wise, On The Shoulders of Titans is very similar to the first book (Sufficiently Advanced Magic). The characters are witty (sometimes to a fault), there’s backstabbing and betrayal and there is at least one God-level power being introduced. This is not a massive negative as I view the plot as secondary to the world and magic system, but its something I thought I should highlight.
On the topic of characters, as my brain meanders when thinking about this, they are solid. All the characters from book 1 have grown across that story and continue to grow here which is nice – I always hate it in a sequel where the characters just stay the same or go on pause. Corin is the biggest notice, they go from “No, I must be alone” to at least trying to care about others more openly. This is good! I look forward to book 3 where this arc can continue.
If I was to have any drawbacks of the story, it feels like Rowe has put himself in the position that he feels like with every story he must go bigger, and BIGGER and EVEN MORE STAKES ON THE LINE. At some point, something’s got to give. It makes the previous plot feel almost comically slice of life or not-as-meaningful as the end part. Now the massive stakes only kicked in the last part of the story but its my only small worry and did impact my enjoyment.
Overall, I would recommend this if you if you enjoyed the first book (EPUB for £3.18). I would point to the Arcane Ascension series as a positive example of the LitRPG genre, with decent characters and worldbuilding and less of the “Oh look, I levelled up, lemme just explain…” – its done a lot more diegetically than others in the genre (A comparison to another book I read last year – Dungeon Crawler Carl had that same diegetic feeling but done very differently).
On The Shoulder Of Titans is avaliable as an EPUB for £3.68. Both together costs you less than a Double Whopper Meal from Burger King. And neither have let me down yet (looking at you, Burger King.)
Final Score: 7.5/10
Letter Rating: B+