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Bez Reviews Independent Books 5: The Last Bread Mage

Hey everyone!  I wanna do little reviews/writeups for the independently-published books I find on itch.io, and so, here I am.  I want to review one book every month or two (or quicker, if I’m lucky); it’ll get me reading more, and get authors who often go without feedback some thoughts on their work!  I think it’ll be cool for everyone!

If you want your book reviewed, the only requirement I have is that it’s hosted on itch.io.  Even if itch is just one of many places you can get the book, I want to review books that have a home there at least.  Feel free to get in touch with me with your books—I’m @NorbezJones on Twitter (I refuse to call it X), Bluesky, Pillowfort, Threads, Instagram, and Tumblr; I’m norbez2.0 on Discord.

Looking forward to seeing your books! <3

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After I reviewed M. Kirin’s Memory Leak, Kirin ( @maxkirin ) contacted me and asked if I wanted a review copy of another one of their books, The Last Bread Mage!  I said yes, and here we are!  So to make it plain as possible: I was giving a free copy of this book in order to review it.  However, that does not sway my opinion of the book either way, and my opinions are 100% my own.

So, what’s The Last Bread Mage about?  Well, in a fantasy world, the end times have arrived.  A red mage named Fel manages to survive the destruction of his magic school, and he finds a saint named Amara, who insists they must go to The Pinnacle, the center of the world.  Along their journey, they find a knight named Virgen and a thief named Dormi.  The four journey to the center of the world using the help of Fel’s magic, and when they get there, they make a surprising discovery.

There are almost 30 chapters, and between each chapter is a mini-chapter that describes something that ended off the previous chapter and/or will start off the next chapter.  This “something” can be an object, a person, a piece of worldbuilding, anything really.  These mini-chapters are a cool idea and add a lot to making the world feel real.

Keep reading

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Bez Reviews Independent Books 1: Memory Leak

Hey everyone!  I wanna do little reviews/writeups for the independently-published books I find on itch.io, and so, here I am.  I want to review one book every month or two (or quicker, if I’m lucky); it’ll get me reading more, and get authors who often go without feedback some thoughts on their work!  I think it’ll be cool for everyone!

If you want your book reviewed, the only requirement I have is that it’s hosted on itch.io.  Even if itch is just one of many places you can get the book, I want to review books that have a home there at least.  Feel free to get in touch with me with your books—I’m @NaomiNorbez on Twitter (I refuse to call it X), Pillowfort, Threads, and Instagram; I’m @norbezjones on Tumblr; I’m norbez2.0 on Discord.

Looking forward to seeing your books! <3

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The first book I’m reviewing Is Memory Leak by @maxkirin !  M. Kirin is a streamer who I happened to follow not long before their book release.  That’s how I heard about it.  Some light spoilers below, but nothing too big is revealed.  Most of the major stuff discussed you can read about right on the book’s itch page.

The plot is basically this: a trouple made a controversial game that won many awards, and also got lots of hate.  Now, they’re trying to make a new project to follow up such a release, but spooky things are happening.  Will they find out why strange events are occurring, or succumb to the haunting?

Everyone’s trans, and I love it.  Adrian’s trans.  Eva’s trans.  Casey’s . . . idk, very queer at least.  She’s also missing for a while, which has turned the game making trio into a duo as they’re trying to finish their new game based on Twelfth Night by Shakespeare.

Most of the book is about blackouts & memory loss, which occur as development goes on.  Reading about those things hurt.  Especially the part where Adrian says, “It didn’t matter if he didn’t remember. He was making something. Something that mattered.” (pg 17-18).  That hit hard, as someone who’s experienced intense periods of memory loss in the past—that was during my pseudo-dementia era (more on that here if you wanna hear the full story).  I had a similar thought to Adrian when I was making A Single Ouroboros Scale while I had pseudo-dementia.  I was desperate to make an impact because I was convinced I would soon forget everything I knew, including how to make games, and everyone would forget me in turn.  It came out as well as you can expect from a very sick, depressed person (which is to say, not good), as I talked about in the postmortem.  I imagine that for our game development trio, the same result occurs.

The hauntings in Memory Leak are rooted in real-life problems in the game development industry, mainly crunch and overworking yourself in order to meet a deadline.  Though in the case of Adrian, Eva, & Casey . . . was a deadline ever specified?  It’s strongly implied, but not overtly stated, as I recall.  Regardless, as a creator in the internet/social media age, you do have to act quickly to release new works, or the public will forget you.  Perhaps that’s why they feel like they need to work as quickly as possible.  There’s some irony in that—the characters’ rush to be remembered, all while they forget more & more.  It’s sad sometimes, the things we sacrifice to be known.

Also, it turns out the famous game the trio made, King Leer, possibly indirectly caused the death of multiple people, and that isn’t mentioned until about halfway through the book?  It’s surprising how that information flies out of nowhere, like a sucker punch.  If one of my games indirectly caused a person to die, I would be haunted by that for the rest of my life.  But the trio seem to have gotten over it, somehow.

My main little nitpick about the writing is that Adrian is referred to as “the young man” quite a bit, and I didn’t like that.  It felt too impersonal, distant.  That’s also something I do in my own writing, referring to the character as anything but their name to avoid saying their name too many times in a row (I blame my OCD [which I literally do have, that is not a figure of speech]).  So maybe it irks me because I see myself in that repeated action. 

As much as I like the writing style, I do have to acknowledge that it keeps us as a distance from the characters.  They’re young men, young women, lost souls.  It’s like we’re also haunting them, a ghost from beyond getting a peek into their lives from the top-down.  The chapter openers reinforce this: in those, you, the reader, are brought into the story, from a second person perspective, and given information about Starling games from YouTube videos, forum posts, messages, etc.  We see them win Game Of The Year, watch as fans deride & praise them, stuff like that.  It’s definitely an interesting way to give us information.

A big issue is that we’re told a lot that these characters love each other, but that bond isn’t quite shown to me. One can argue that it is between Adrian & Eva at least, but Casey?  In the beginning, it seems like she dislikes Adrian & Eva, but then there’s still a scene where she cries while apologizing to Adrian for yelling at him, saying how much she loves him.  I got the sense that she clings to Adrian & Eva because she used to love them, for a long time, and she doesn’t want to let that go.  Because to let that go would be venturing into unknown & very awkward territory.  How do you break up your polycule if you rely on them to earn a living and make games?  Short answer: you don’t, so you pretend instead.  And when you pretend enough, it can become real again.

This is a problem because the love these characters have for each other is a core tenant of the book, especially in the climax.  I wish we could’ve spent more time seeing how they fell in love with each other, back when Starling Games was new.  At least Casey’s love for the others becomes clearer as the book goes on; that’s a good thing.

As for the big twist, I saw the first part of it coming from a mile away.  That’s not a bad thing—a good twist should fit the plot & themes, not be 100% unpredictable, and this twist did.  The second part of the twist is mentioned on the book’s page, but the execution is so interesting you can almost forget that fact.

Last note: I was hoping the book would tell us why the works the trio make are so fucked up, if they’re a reflection of the soul, or just dark spurts of creativity.  The reason is revealed, and it’s fascinating—after all, if we’ve learned anything from The Beginner’s Guide, it’s that art doesn’t always reflect the author.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book.  It was a very interesting story about the struggle of game development, and how our search for a legacy can haunt us.  The characters are interesting, and the story is very well told.  I would recommend it.

If you want to read Memory Leak, you can do so FOR FREE right here!  Give it a look!  Please!  I’m begging you!

Thanks for reading!  The next review will be of To Wield The Darkest Night by Beau Van Dalen.  But I don’t know what I’m doing after that, so please send me your lovely books!

ALT

these are not normal times.