The (Sort of) Dark Mage

Waldo Rabbit Series, Book 1

By: Nelson Chereta

Narrated by: Gary Furlong

Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

The (Sort of) Dark Mage is the story of a young man named Waldo who grows up in a world where monsters, the undead, and dark magic are part of everyday life. He is forced to go on a journey to prove himself and soon discovers that his beliefs don't fit into the wider world.

©2013 Nelson Chereta (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A fantastic book...Nelson Chereta has a unique talent at writing witty dialogue and engaging characters. He also has that rare gift that manages to successfully infuse humor into the story, without cheapening it." (Fantasy Muse)

Engaging, but has no ending.

This was a fun story that drew me in and kept a smile on my face most of the way through. I would recommend it except for one glaring flaw...

It doesn't end, it just stops.

It feels like someone tore a book in half, let me read it enough to get hooked, and then yanked the rest of the story away from me.

I love long series and story arks. My audible books for the past few months have been the Dragons of Dorcastle series which is a six-book epic sprawl before it feels like the main action has finally resolved, but at the end of each book, the story arc has a resolution. There is an ebb and flow to the narrative that makes it clear, even when the ending is less than satsifying, that our characters have completed a leg of their journey.

This book is more cliffhangery than a chapter from Scott Sigler. And less satisfying than a Season of Lost.

Since I have been sucked in, I'll give the rest a listen to see if the overall story ends up being worth it, but for the rest of you I'm going to leave you with the advice I wish I'd had before I stumbled down the Waldo Rabbit-hole:

Wait until you can get the whole story at once.

I'm not sure how many pieces it's been chopped into, but if you can't get the whole thing, it's a lose-lose situation. Either you hate it and wasted your time, or you love it and feel cheated.

Listen to this audiobook...

Modern fantasy is unfortunately filled with bumbling, sad-sack dummies who luck their way into succeeding against all odds. They do idiotic things through naïveté, ignorance, or just because the author is lazy and has decided to have the character do something... because reasons.

Not only is this book spot-on with a humorous take on the quest fantasy genre, it is also a compelling and engrossing story in and of itself. All the while it manages to have you rooting for the ignorant dummy instead of rolling your eyes and ultimately trying to get your credit back.

The narration is seamless to the point where you stop noticing that someone else is reading the book to you and it feels like you are absorbing it directly.

I will definitely be looking out for any books read by Gary Furlong going forward.

...I hardly ever give books a whole-heartedly positive review, but this one deserves it. I can’t wait to start the next one in this series.

Warning: LitRPG + cliffhanger

First, the good.
Plot is quite OK.
Dialog is very nice.
Humor is meh to not bad. Except for the last minute, where it's nauseating.

Now, the bad.
This is not a novel. It's LitRPG. Half the length of the book is wasted on thoroughly explaining the rules of the world and/or making lists of monsters/features/spells et cetera ad nauseam.
That's just bad taste.

Also, it ends on a blatant cliffhanger, without even a pretense of making it a complete story.

I'm going to return it. If ever there is an omnibus on Audible I may spend 1 credit on it. Maybe.

A funny new book

This is one of the most hilarious books that I have read thus far in 2017. Waldo is a 16-year-old male who has lived at home, in a castle, his entire life. He is an educated dark wizard without a truly evil bone in his body. It is his totally cluelessness of real life, which makes the story so funny. He refers to the sun as the big red ball in the sky.

Waldo was raise in the arts of being a cut throat dark mage, where your family members are your deadliest enemy. Now he is thrust into the world on a dangerous quest without common sense or a desire to take a life. One of the first things that happens is he gets married. While most men think they know how relationships work, Waldo has no clue. In acquiring a familiar he gets a wife. To him a familiar, a monster who is under the control of a wizard, must do what he is told to do by the master. So what could be the difference?

In Waldo’s adventure to prove himself, he incenses villagers against the white mage community, he is physically abused by his “wife/familiar” and his grandfather is out to kill him.

This book ends in a cliff hanger but book two is available for download.

Truly Enjoyable

What did you love best about The (Sort of) Dark Mage?

The book genuinely made me burst out laughing any times

Any additional comments?

I listened to this entire title in one go. I have never felt confident in abridging words to describe a fantastic book. It was a very fun read and more of a comedy than anything else. The world building was good, the comedy fantastic, and the casual graphic violence was very entertaining in its context.

The narrator of this story did a wonderful job and I hope he continues to be a fantastic combination with this author and series.

awesome

i love this book and this was a good audiobook. I'm looking forward to the next audiobook and can't wait for the third book to come out.

If nothing else catches your ear...

The premise of this story was great. But the actual story did not live up to it. Many parts were really enjoyable, no laugh out loud humor but a few chuckles and number of smiles. Lilith was a great character. Conflicted, tortured of soul. Ruthless and yet loving and in a way tender with regards to her youngest son, Waldo. We're it not for her environment and some tragic flaws, Lilith would have been a powerful force for good. Perhaps a benevolent ruler in a different land, one who would be lauded and remembered with fondness by her faithful subjects rather than the conniving and murderous head of a treacherous family in an equally treacherous land.
And that's where the major screw up of the author comes in. Yes, Waldo was raised and protected within the confines of his family castle and really had no idea what the outside world was like. But he would have learned cunning and deception by sheer observance of his family. Instead, Waldo is clueless. He boldly proclaims his eeeveeeellness to all within earshot as well as his intent to rob, deceive, murder, steal, etc. etc. but and has no idea of how to really do any of those things. He is like a teenager who read a bunch of books about how to be eeeveeeell written by an Austin Powers arch villain. And Alice overdoes it with the whole Darling thing a few too many times.
Yet the book is nevertheless fairly enjoyable and has its bright moments. Hopefully the 2nd book will be better written.

similar to kel kades kingdom of darkness

for all of you patiently waiting for your next fix of resken, this book will sate your hunger. fantastic portrayal of the main character, he tries so hard to be bad and evil but some roles are not meant to be. all of the characters are rich and easily likable.

Awesome book all around

I don't do reviews very often, besides rating then by stars. But this was a great book, great narrative , storyline and characters . Can't wait to read the next one .

Funny as hell

Dont think i have laughed out loud so much from any book ever. Its a simple book that uses the main characters upbringing as a gag and it works great

Who Framed Waldo Rabbit?

Funniest thing since Pratchett as one Amazon reviewer has said? Well I’m not so sure about that but this one did make me chuckle quite a good few times. It did take me a little while to get in tune with the humour as the book almost seemed to be veering off into something serious at times. I think that was possibly more my mood than the book because Waldo’s family the Corpselovers are set up in a very amusing fashion. As it progresses though and Waldo journeys onwards it resolves into real comedic episodes. Waldo declaring his family name in an effort to placate an angry crowd was probably when I realised just how much I was enjoying the ride. The following battle of the sexes that ensues right up to a genuinely laugh out loud ending to this first book of the series is particularly well done.

The narration by Gary Furlong is bright and breezy so the book never seems never seemed to drag at any point.

In summary this is a light-hearted fantasy road-trip with a slightly different “battle of the sexes” and set of rather fascinating family relationships at its heart. Waldo’s grandfather and his first familiar are the real highlights and his continued utter failure to understand the world around him after his isolated upbringing provides a lot of the laughs.

One dimensional

I am thinking that this must be a young person's book and I must have bought it in error. The characters and plot are very one dimensional and the whole thing is very simple and predictable. The story unfolds at an unutterably slooooow pace.
The end isn't even nearly the end. The book suddenly stops, as though the last half of the book has already been eaten by bookworms. That is irritating. I dutifully listened to the end, expecting some sort of resolution, after all I did pay for a whole book.
I was pleased when it was over. I won't be buying any more volumes. Sorry Nelson, this just wasn't right for me.

This is no Pratchett!

I read a couple of reviews liking this book to the great late Sir Terry, so I had to give it a try!

Starting with the positive, I liked the synopsis of a Dark Mage who wants to be evil but just can’t pull it off. There was certainly potential but sadly that’s where it ends.

The book felt like it was written by a sexually frustrated teenage boy who has heard about girls, looked at pictures of girls but never actually spoken to one. That’s how I assume he wrote the character Alice, if she was any more one dimensional she’d look like the floating prison of plastic Superman trapped General Zod in during Superman II

The narrator was the wrong person for this story. He had no comic timing or expression so when there was the occasional humorous bit (there were a couple) it just fell completely flat. Whether that was due to the source material or if he is better suited to other genres I don’t know, his pacing was good and he might have drawn me into a better story.

I only continued with the book as it was included with my Audible Plus perks and I’m low on credits, but I certainly wouldn’t get another book in this series or by this author

Lovely monsters!

I loved this book! We have monsters and wizards, plots and wheezes, and a good old-fashioned quest. It's fun and lively, and has a really frolicsome air about it.

The story is engaging and left me wanting more. The reading is lovely, and adds to the very warm and friendly feel of the book. This is one I'll revisit if I ever find myself needing a cheering story to capture my imagination and lift my spirits.
I hugely enjoyed it, and feel like I found a little treasure.

Hours of my life I’m not getting back

There’s so much wrong with this story, and its made harder to listen to both by the fact it had some potential, and by the fact that the entirely professional performance is sadly somewhat emotionally dead in the places it needed a bit of emotion. I don’t blame the reader - managing not to cringe through some of the passages in this must have been hard enough. The protagonist manages to be arrogant and unsure of himself at the same time, looking down on virtually everyone even as he bemoans his own inability to do magic as is expected of him. He supposedly has a good heart, but never once questions the slavery of his homeland even though he’s seen slaves he liked murdered in front of him - mostly because he’d given away the fact that he liked them. There’s some slapstick romantic comedy, but the romance is very lacking - given how he treats her, I don’t really understand why the (admittedly naive) female lead falls out of love with him almost as fast as she developed an infatuation with him. Then there’s the choice of surname for the protagonist’s villainous family - if I never have to hear or think the word Corpselover again, it’ll be too soon. It seems to have been picked for a one-off scene where the protagonist is mistaken for a necrophiliac. I can’t imagine anyone ever considering this the name of a prominent family like the protagonist’s. You’d change it. I got to the end of this purely because I was writing a review for a book group. I’d like a story where the female lead Alice ditches protagonist Waldo and goes off to have her own life, frankly. We’re meant to see Waldo as having been raised in an unpleasant, evil land and accepting its values whilst also questioning the ‘righteous’ values of the opposing faction. The problem is that this supposedly smart, kind boy treats others like dirt and utterly fails to forsee the inevitable result when not under his family’s protection - even when he’s supposed to know that infiltrating other countries is dangerous. Plus he’s about 90% unsympathetic because he’s such a jerk. Also looks like it’s going down a harem route, mostly by mystically forcing the females to be tied to Waldo. I’m noping out. Emotionally unrealistic and unfun, the Waldo Rabbit series just isn’t for me, and I’m honestly surprised it’s for as many people as it is.

Good story with a dash of humour!

I did not have high hopes to be honest. Chose this book because I was out of credits. To my surprise (sorry to prejudge) this book was very funny and the story is also quite good. I will definately listen to the next ones in this series.

Waldo lot of brilliance (sorry).

First the bad.
Now the good. Everything! Truly loved this book. Laugh out loud funny at times. Truly engaging characters. Outstanding narration. Brilliant storyline. Already downloaded the next 2 in the series. Hopefully there is more but I only had 2 credits left.

Absolutely brilliant from start to finish!

I have to be honest this was an accidental find. It came up in my free offerings and I choose it randomly not expecting much, boy was I wrong!
The story is so well written.
I loved all the characters for different reasons, each one had a personality that drew me in.
The main character is obliviously funny in his odd ways and each acquaintance that joins him on his quest has an equally entertaining personality.
I was completely hooked, couldn’t stop listening, was laugh out loud funny on many occasions.
All brought to life by the brilliant narration. He definitely added so much to these characters he plays them perfectly.
When I got to the end, which I didn’t see coming I actually squealed out loud with disappointment, I had so many questions and I was so enthralled with Waldo’s journey.
I was straight onto audible looking for more books and thankfully it’s a series of 5.
I’m currently half way through book 2 which so far is even better than the first.
Brilliant series can’t rate them highly enough.
Thank you Waldo Rabbit for finding me when my life needed an injection of humour and fun :))

Genuinely hilarious

I enjoyed this book just fine, but it's the rest of the series that had me laughing hard. It's full of interesting ideas and I listened to them all back-to-back, desperate to find out what would happen next. The narrator also does a fantastic job, better than the ones doing lots of bestsellers.
Highly recommend!

Good listen

Funny and interesting take on the fantasy quest genre - good performances and looking forward to the next instalment