Spell Breaker

A Progression Fantasy Adventure (Arcane Academy, Book 2)

By: A.P. Gore, Patricia Jones

Narrated by: Matt Hicks, Erin Bateman

He's Not Just Breaking the Rules Anymore. He's Teaching a Masterclass in It.

A reincarnated evil lord knows the value of a good tool. At the Arcane Academy, Daren Morin has found a toolkit of broken misfits, and he's ready to start building his arsenal.

His goal isn't just to survive his second life; it's to dominate it. He offers them secrets and forbidden power, demanding a price they don't yet understand. Then, the game changes.

A routine competition becomes a deadly dungeon crawl—an unexpected trial by fire.

For everyone else, it's a fight for survival. For Daren, it's the first battle in the war only he knows is coming, and a chance to see if his investments will pay off.

As they grow stronger under his cold guidance, they begin to see him as a savior. A dangerous mistake. Because when the time comes, Daren Morin will cash in his investment, and the entire academy will pay the price.

Join Daren in his journey to power once again. For fans of Progression Fantasy, Magic Academy, and cunning Antiheroes who play to win.

©2025 A.P. Gore and Patricia Jones (P)2025 Royal Guard Publishing LLC

Good enough

Magic system is extremely interesting, the characters that do have any flushing out are pretty interesting but I’ve found that most of the characters fall flat and feel pretty one dimensional. Plot has a lot of potential. Dialogue feels a bit awkward most of the time and could use some polishing. Overall decently satisfying read

Dialogue reads like Machine Translation.

No allegations of AI writing; I actually felt like the narrative prose was alright. It’s just that all the dialogue reads like a translation that never went through a localization team-straight machine translated. Every time someone opened their mouth, the book felt stilted, uninflected, and clunky. Every conversation was awkwardly on-the-nose, like a storyboard draft used to structure a scene but never rewritten into actual prose. Except it was every scene.

The narrators did solid work and offered an admirable range. But even their best efforts couldn’t breathe life into these characters; it would’ve taken a miracle for me to feel invested in any of them.

I would recommend this novel to anyone in the mood for an arrogant, vindictive, and overbearing MC. It wasn't quite what I was looking for when I read it, but I imagine it would be satisfying to read after an obsequious MC story. It's a villain regression story, albeit with little charm.

Darin Morin "In a condescending tone"

Every single character acts all high, mighty and shocked every time the main character does anything. Character says they are going going to do something shitty, Main character twists it and does something shitty to them, Character is shocked that main character could do such a thing....rinse repeat over and over. Seriously that's the whole book.

eye roll inducing

every character in this book has the mentality of a particularly entitled 15 year old edgelord, the MC is a self proclaimed Evil lord but just acts like a generic extra in a cultivation novel. I would of assumed this story was a parody, but sadly it's not.