Book Report - Aether's Revival Book 2-7 by Daniel Schinhofen

Originally Published: Nov. 11, 2023, 1:15 a.m. Last updated: Nov. 11, 2023, 1:15 a.m.

Tags: books

Yes I read the other 6 books back to back in 2 weeks. I was up as late as 4am, entirely absorbed, on some nights.

Look this is just. This is just totally the kind of trashy stuff I love. A little short on the explicit scenes, especially in book 7. I love the love, I love the cheesiness, I love the deeper look at what a particular magic system would mean and how a character would push their magic to further and further advantage. We started the series a bit too close to HP for my liking, but I'm incredibly satisfied with Greg and his wives' journeys and very much looking forward to more. The latest book was published about 6 months ago, so I hope that means more are on the way.

There's a number of problematic tropes and aspects here, and we got a bit repetitive at times on certain aspects. The reading level isn't super high, and a better editing pass to clean up some of the more awkward dialogue and phrasings could be warranted. The worst aspect is when too many wives were part of the conversation at the same time, they felt a bit like an echo of each other with nothing meaningful to contribute. If the series continues, it looks like we'll be having as many as 6 wives at the same time in the same place. If that's the case, it would do Schinhofen well to have them pass the conversation back and forth while moving topics around at a faster pace. To be clear, there were conversations that went like this:
Greg: I think A.
Wife 1: Ah, but have you considered B?
Wife 2: Yes, A but B.
Wife 3: B but also A.
etc
To me these are the major flaws and are pretty much superficial. I may have missed another annoyance or 2, but basically I have very little to complain about.

Ok, I'm going to just geek out over all kinds of things, some I very much enjoyed, and others I rolled my eyes at.

We spent over half a book playing pretty much Warhammer. I don't play Warhammer at all, but I appreciate the balls it took to dedicate half a book to playing a board game.

We did a thing where all the girls potentially joining the harem have to admit their deepest desires, and damn was there some whiplash from tame to very spicy.

There's a point where Greg finds out how many wives his previous incarnation had and he's even like, damn that's kind of too much.

There are a few self-aware characters that are like, "Is this fucker actually getting married again?" And I loved that.

We've got loose ends all over and we've been hitting older ones every now and then, so I hope for more of those to tied up.

We could use more time with Bishop.

It took until book 4 before we had a male peer that wasn't an antagonist.

There's so much slavery and I'm very happy we're taking a stand against it where we can. Looking forward to tearing apart the system piece by piece.

The magic here is SO satisfying. We're not quite a hard-magic system, but there's enough concrete limits here that almost nothing felt like a complete ass-pull. I love being able to speculate.

Greg's biggest weakness at this point, IMO, is the lack of proactive action. BIG SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH. Book 7 has Greg spending his 5th year of being a magi leading a small company of men on patrols through frozen wilderness. He's told there's never been a person posted to this particular patrol that went the whole year without losing a man. The only time Greg loses any is when he's ambushed by forces from the slavers taking revenge for his disruption of their business. He sees it coming via his foresight magic, but concludes there's no way to keep everyone alive. With a heavy heart, he takes the course of action that leads to the least casualties while making sure that they can punish those behind the ambush. Here's my issues here: 1) The reason they're ambushed is because they use the same patrol route through the same camps every week (it takes 5 days each way from town A to town B). This is at least in part due to there being no other route and no other camps to hit. The way I would take down a magi that could see into the future is similar to how you take out a speedster in superhero fiction: you throw too much at them at the same time. You force them to make a hard choice because they can't be 2 places at the same time. Once Greg developed the skill to see a full day into the future for these patrols, he needed to create alternative routes for emergencies. He should have had his men slowly dig some new paths or new campsites over the course of the year. Something to put himself outside of the range of influence of things that could be thrown at him. The counter to "throw too much at him" is "stop some of the things ahead of time. 2) We spent half a book playing a fantasy war simulation board game, learning to do war. We spent even more discussing the same thing. Why did we not have any lessons from that book carry over to this one? Why couldn't we hit the ambush with hit and run tactics and wear them down? Why couldn't we poison or spoil their food supply? Why couldn't we pick away at them and whittle them down over a few nights? Why couldn't we bait them out bit by bit? All of these were mentioned at least once when they studied the war game. 3) I think if Greg was a little more ruthless he'd realize that his magic is just as good at mass assassination as shadow and space magic are. He should be practicing a little with some ranged weapons, and then using his powers the same way as asssassination of a whole camp in Skyrim with a stealth build would work. He's explained his powers as being able to follow plans of action choice by choice and see the results that would happen from them. Get close to enemy, then trial and error the magical thought experiment until you have a path that kills either everyone or at least enough that you can brute force the rest. Here's the scene:
If I assassinate Guard A, he's in view of Guard B so I alert the camp. Try again with Guard B first, that works, then A is clear. Move on to C. D and E both see each other so I make a noise between them, then wait for them to get close to each other and kill both at the same time. Etc etc.
But he couldn't because X Y Z! No, he couldn't because he didn't take proactive steps ahead of time to increase the tactics available to him. As you can see, I've gotten passionate here. I think for that last scenario especially, Greg is too compassionate to be able to do that to men that haven't attacked him first. Furthermore in the actual battle, there was at least one coerced person on the ambushing side that chose to throw his weapon down and try to escape once he realized what they were being made to do, so my plan would have had Greg kill at least one innnocent man. Ok, typing this out, my last solution was a little too murder-hobo, but I still think a variation on it would have worked.

TL:DR, it's a bit trashy but I loved it. More books soon please, and more spice as well :)