Minute Mage

A LitRPG Adventure

De: Reg Rome

Narrado por: Brian Wiggins

When you steal Time Magic, prepare to run for eternity …

Arlan can go back in time by one minute, once per day.

Fail a challenge? Say something dumb? He can get a redo as long as he acts fast.

And every time he levels up, he can go back a little further.

But, even with his growing power, Arlan has never been in more danger. He was left stranded in the middle of a monster-infested forest, nobody to rely on but himself as he fights to build strength.

And his time magic wasn't given to him freely.

He stole it.

And its original owners would go to any lengths to take it back.

Don't miss the start of a new LitRPG adventure filled with time magic, three-dimensional characters, a crunchy LitRPG system, tactical combat, and power progression where level-ups are hard-earned and bring with them meaningful change in characters’ abilities.

©2023 Reg Rome (P)2023 Recorded Books

Great performance

I really didn’t care for the main character to much but the devil kinda got me hooked

Well-written

I almost didn't buy this book because of the few reviews and because the author was college-aged. Turned out that I don't have any complaints about the writing; it's quite a cut above most in this genre. The MC is cheerful, optimistic, and funny, but also refuses to be manipulated by others, which is refreshing.

But my fondness for the book waned after about 2/3rd of the way through. The excessive internal monologuing of the MC started getting irritating and if, this had been physical book, I would have started skimming. There really wasn't much chemistry between the MC and his two-dimensional female sidekick, so it was hard to find plausible the budding romance. And, most importantly, I didn't like the chapters from the perspectives of the bad guys, which featured a lot of murder and torture of relatively innocent people. The one interesting minor character, whom the author seemed to be setting up to play a larger role in the future, was casually murdered by a demon, so that was a missed opportunity.

So, while the author clearly has talent, I'd like to see him construct more than one likeable character, spend more time on good dialog instead of internal thoughts, and give our characters the ability to stop evil rather than letting it run amok.

Story feels imbalanced

A lot of times when I read a book, I tend to naturally tune out the flaws and less than ideal elements. If the book continues on without any major complaint and so long as I have a good reason to enjoy the story, those flaws never end up surfacing to become relevant. Unfortunately, those flaws were triggered for me.

It is in my opinion that anytime a character in a story is killed, it should ultimately have the effect of enhancing the story to make for a more compelling plot.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

Basically a minor character was being built up only to be torn down with quite literally a single over powered punch. It genuinely kind of felt like a betrayal by the author of the that character.

So, after that happened, I kind of started looking back at the story that led up to that moment; and started reflecting on the base elements of the book.

The litrpg system, while not my favorite, was good. A unique class given to the MC with nice progression elements for, not just the MC, but also for the general populous.

What baffles me though, is the rather absurd, imbalance of power between the demons and humans. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if there were some form of checks and balances, but from what I can tell, there aren’t any.

First off, generally, humans are way under leveled then I think they ought to be. The MC is already higher than level 10 by the end of the book and I don’t think he’s been leveling more than a few months at most. Even considering his unique advantages, I find it hard to believe that from an entire Kingdom, one of there strongest individuals hasn’t even reached level 30.

And they die in a single punch.

Literally the biggest reason why the MC isn’t dead by the end of the book, is entirely because of the demon society’s version of bureaucracy, and very little to do with what MC is capable of.

I think this lopsidedness would have been fine, especially if the story leaned more into humor, but with the one-sided slaughter of humans mixed in I find myself more ticked off than entertained.

I really did enjoy most of the book, but the overall story kind of ended up falling flat for me.

Also, i genuinely felt bad for the narrator having to say the absurdly long demon names just for the sake of a little humor on the author’s part. (literally 24+ syllable names)

Well written, engaging, but one critical flaw

I'll start by saying I've scraped the bottom of the lit RPG barrel and I have read some very not good novels. this is not that. it is a well written and well paced novel with a few minor structural issues that annoy the heck out of me. 1. The MC has various progression paths available and 9 times out of 10 you'll hate the path he chooses. This is true across books. The author gives themselves the foundation amd opportunity and backstreet to justify a pretty cool charachter build and then chooses seemingly at the last moment the most boring & predictable path. Not only that but it relies on the MC somehow being able to always outrun out tank and out muscle dedicated physichal classes despite taking no points directly into physichal stats. Its annoying that in order for the charachter to feel cool I have to constantly suspend my disbelief and go "yeah totally makes sense that despite having the dexterity of a slightly athletic human he can do nearly impossible things against supervillainswith state blocks dedicated to seemingly just health with no strength dex intelligence etc. This could have so easily been avoided and it is so aggressively steered into at every opportunity that it makes the whole series hard to read.

"Smart" character is mentally deficient.

As the title states, the side character is an absolute moron. The author bends over backwards to try to portray her as "the smart, bookish one", but she is just ham-fistedly, high-key, unrelentingly 'tarded. Don't get me wrong, the MC is an idiot also, as well as a Gary Stu thanks to plot armor to save him from his own idiocy - his love interest is just 100x worse.

Knows the MC for less than a day, DEMANDS to know his EVERY secret because she "has to know" and how DARE he keep secrets from her. Demands he commit suicide because the villains that hunt him are bing villains and is somehow convinced they'll stop being villains and killing all the people if he just lets them kill HIM. Is given a set of information, believes everything that fits her world view and outright dismisses every bit of info that doesn't - full stop, no discussion, just "No, I don't believe you because I BELIEVE that to not be possible, and my feelings are more valid than your evidence/experience.

Imagine if Harmine was a min-maxer who insists on learning spells in the order the newest wizard build guide said was "optimized" because she literally cannot have an original thought that isn't "whatever I believe if correct and if you contradict it, you're the fool".

I'm only halfway through the book as I write this, and I genuinely hope she straight up dies horribly.

Edit: gave up with 9 hours left after she insisted the MC NOT take the only spell upgrade option that let him heal himself. The guy is a touch-based spell user that gets the crap beat out of him nearly every fight and neither of them have ANY means of healing. She is so GD stupid, and he's stupid for listening to her.