Rune Mage Ascending

Broken System, Book 1

By: D. Winchester

Narrated by: Ronnie Rowlands, Cassandra Quinn

Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

Benjamin's life was perfect. He'd just graduated from college and landed his dream job; he was finally ready to make his own way in life. However, before he could do that, he and his buddies decided to go on one last camping trip that changed everything.

Suddenly, the five of them were ripped from their campsite on Earth by powerful magics, brought face-to-face with the might of the rune mages, and forced to become pawns in larger schemes. Those sorcerers are the least of his worries. Before he can even get his bearings, Benjamin and his friends are attacked by a horde of beastmen, leaving them confused, isolated, and lost in a fantasy world filled with mythical creatures and strange, techno-magic systems to aid them.

As they struggle to make their way in this strange new world, Benjamin and his friends are determined to survive and figure out the peculiar magics they're been imbued with. Even newfound powers won't guarantee they'll live long enough to find their way home.

Rune Mage Ascending the first book of the Broken System trilogy; it's a LitRPG story with system elements that reexamines old tropes in a new light and explores the nature of identity and self.

©2024 D. Winchester (P)2024 Royal Guard Publishing LLC

Incessant inner thoughts

This book wasn’t terrible but aside from the beginning and the end it was effectively 4 hours of mc thinking. This annoyed me because the story could have, no should have progressed a hell of a lot farther than it did. Instead this feels like a pre amble and not a first book.

Great start!

Good character development, although I need more. This is what I would consider an excellent first book in a series, setting up the background and mechanics for the readers, but it ends on a soft cliffhanger. It’s a good stopping spot, but if there was more of the story ready, I wouldn’t put the book down here. Highly encourage people who like litrpgs to pick this one up, as it doesn’t have the endless stats that bog down so many books in the genre, and it is a refreshingly novel take on character building.

Love this series!

I love the start of the series and I can't wait to listen to future installments!

Very cool start!!

Okay, the thing that was unique was that it wasn’t just the MC that was transported to a LitRPG type world (which is cool as hell by the way) but he did so not along but with a group of friends which I felt help ease the fear and stress of such a scenario for the MC and crew. Great narration and story, and find myself eagerly awaiting the next installment! Well done!

Lovely story

The cover sold me on th is book before I even looked what would go on the cover.

Benjamin is a good character and quite true to how a normal human would get yanked around upon ending up in a System like he did. Things seemed to move appropriately, though I hope he gets a little more assertive in the next book as he and his friends gain power and understanding of the world. Interesting to see what happens next!

Good series start.

This is a decent story and a pretty good start to the series.
The magic kinda jumps around a bit with the MC and is hard to follow at times but the characters are pretty well flushed out.
I'm looking forward to book 2 to see where this goes.
I'm giving this book 7 out of 5 stars.

liked it

an enjoyable isekai anime with magic and adventure, if you enjoy a good thrilling adventure with magic, being transported to another world and trying to survive you will love this book series

Interesting premise, a good start.

The story has an interesting premise and a unique take on the usual system genre, there’s a few places I felt could use more detail, such as further explanation of how magic works past it just being “like code” but so far an intriguing magic system as well. It’s a little bit short for the price at the time of writing this, but serves as a good setup for future books. I’ll be interested to see where this goes.

Ascending

This book has a nice plot. A good twist to the genre as a whole. Very good word building.

MC has zero agency

The book isn't bad, but MC is wishy-washy ...he gets dragged along by events instead of making decisions ...it's a pet peeve of mine, I don't like that style of story-telling. It feels unbalanced.
Other ppl might like it tho.
I'm not discouraging ppl from checking out this book ...jus be forewarned, MC gets dragged around n u get dragged around with him.
It's not a typical progression fantasy.