Misfit Mage

Fledgling God, Book 1

By: Michael Taggart

Narrated by: Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey

He went searching for a fresh start. He didn’t expect to find unusual friends, fierce enemies, and primal powers.

Jason thought that it was the end of his life after being hunted and attacked by a band of ruthless thugs. Instead, he tapped into the source of creation and emerged from his death experience with magical powers.

As a new mage, Jason finds himself part of a wonderful - and dangerous - new supernatural world. He also finds himself in the middle of a mage war as he becomes part of an unlikely group of protectors who are defending a mystical mansion from those who want to destroy it.

Jason has little power, and the band of misfits are on the losing side, until he discovers he can see and manipulate magic at a remarkable level. What he detects begins his journey into discovering how his new powers really work, and just might be the edge that they need to survive.

If you like witty dialogue, diverse characters, magic that feels real, and intense action, then you will love this LGBTQ urban fantasy. Buy Misfit Mage today and step into a new enchanted world.

©2019 Michael Taggart (P)2020 Michael Taggart

This book is great!!!

Loved this book can’t wait to read the next book and the next!!! This book flowed from beginning to end!

Outstanding narration!

I loved reading this story when it first came out but this narrator is great!

a lot of drama and talk

The characters sounded like they were from sesame street and there was a little of dragging dialog from the main character and unnecessary drama.

Really wanted to like this one more

Theoretically I should have really liked Misfit Mage; for one thing, it's a real urban fantasy novel and not just a collection of erotic scenes wrapped in a thin layer of plot, so that right there puts it above the vast majority of the gay fiction available on Audible. For another, the writing is really very good—smart and witty. The narrator is pretty good, too.

So why, then, did I start liking the book less and less as I listened until finally, frustrated, I hit the "stop" button? I'm not even really sure myself, to be honest. I could say rightly that I didn't particularly know much about the main character; we first meet him as he's running for his life, and from there it's just one crisis after another and we really don't get a chance to know him very well, at least not before the point I stopped listening. If I don't get a chance to know the protagonist at rest, I don't really care much about him when he's in danger.

Magic, too, isn't very fun in this world, and I know this because the book expounds a good deal of time and energy explaining it to me. And by "explaining," I literally mean the characters sit around talking about it for a long time, right after we meet them. I should say, it sounds like it COULD be fun, but it's constrained by so many rules that we are informed of, rapid-fire, that it doesn't even seem worth the trouble, especially after what happens when Jason tries his magic out for the first time after his awakening, which is a scene that drags out for so long I became bored and frustrated and that's when I stopped listening.

There's sort of a flailing about for a tone in the beginning of the novel, as well. It begins on a light note; even though the narrator is being pursued, there are definitely some funny asides and the overall effect is sort of comical. Very abruptly, however, there is a shift and we are subjected to a rather horrifically violent scene that seems very out of sync with what has come before. I'm not averse to dramatic shifts in tone, but it is rather jarring, and the unexpectedly graphic violence at the very beginning of the novel is, I suspect, what's behind some of the one star reviews which the book definitely does NOT deserve.

I don't know, the truth is I was sad putting this down, because it has a lot of potential. I don't usually review books I don't finish unless I know for a fact I won't listen to them again, and in this case I don't know that. The writing is good, and it's so nice to read gay fiction that isn't, like, 80% porn, and I could easily give it another shot.

Amazing start to a wonderful heartfelt fantasy series

Amazing start to a wonderful heartfelt fantasy series. Really love the creativity, details, and pacing. Felt like I was learning right alongside the main character, and didn't feel like a steep learning curve like many other fantasy series. The world is unique, interesting, and has a good balance between plot and character depth and relationships. Great to see fantasy series with queer inclusivity and themes of found family. So far book 3 of the series is my favorite, but this is a close second. I'm re-listening to the series with a new perspective of everything we learn along the way