Summary
Take one popular medieval rave themed VR video game. Add an audacious, somewhat self-absorbed slacker gamer. Drizzle in dueling suspicious, evil cabal machinations with an anarchist crew. Sprinkle in equal parts a wannabe space god, space kaijus, carnivorous living thunderstorm, and an empress of California. And the result is Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore. Quick disclosure: I had a digital copy, but ended up borrowing an audio copy. And I think audio is the best way to fully enjoy the witty inaneness of Scotto Moore’s iconoclastic heroine, Isobel, inside and outside the detailed Sparkle Dungeon world. All of it ends up as a wonderfully crazy space opera just like old-fashioned radio plays.

This book felt very infodumpy and I think that I just wasn't the intended audience. I'm not a video game person, but I was hopeful that this book would have an Ender's Game vibe, but I just felt overwhelmed with all the information and details and got about halfway through before tapping out. I wanted to like a space opera kind of book, with linguistics, with a female lead, and yet.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

Thank you to Netgalley and the published for giving me an advanced copy of this book to read and review.

This book wasn't for me. The premise was interesting as I like linguistics and thought that the incorporation into the world building would be cool. I didn't like the plot or writing as it was a lot that fell flat or was too much.

I absolutely adored Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You, because it was weird and fast — I read it all in one sitting. I went into Battle of the Linguist Mages, therefore, with very high hopes. Unfortunately, this one lacked the pace of Scotto Moore’s novella, dragging along and getting bogged down instead of moving the plot along. An overall disappointment.

Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was a pleasant surprise.

As I get older I find myself reading less and less fantasy, particularly that in the sci fi sub genre. I’m not crazy about the direction this type of fiction has gone in general, and its rise in mainstream popularity has also flooded the market with poor quality offerings.

So I didn’t expect to think much of this book, and was thus delighted by how much I enjoyed it. Despite not being a gamer, I tend to enjoy the more video game-centric books in the sci-fi genre than, say, space operas. In the tradition of books like Ready Player One, this is a fun blend of game and reality.

The story boasts a solidly likable protagonist with a snarky sense of humor that’s more clever than sneering, even if she does wander into moralizing a tad too often. To that end, all the bleating about the evils of capitalism feels a little tired. While I may agree with the author and the character in spirit about this issue, this is an underinformed perspective on the topic and also not something I love seeing this much of in a fantasy novel.

Regardless, it’s a fun story with a clever sense of humor and a solid sense of adventure.

This is a deliciously psychedelic romp through the virtual worlds of gamers, linguists, philosophers, cultists, and political power players. Isobel is the Queen of Sparkle Dungeon, a medieval rave-themed VR game. Her prowess makes her an ideal candidate to learn the secrets of "power morphemes"—dense units of meaning that can warp reality when skillfully pronounced. As she masters level after level of power morphemes, she realizes the driving force behind them—and her beloved game—is a shadowy faction led by the Governor of California, bent on developing the arcane art of combat linguistics to create a totalitarian empire. This faction is out to recruit Isobel, but so is the resistance movement of spellcasting anarchists. Unfortunately for everyone, the faction has attracted much bigger and weirder enemies than the resistance, emerging from dark and vicious dimensions of reality.

The story is jam-packed with ideas, action, and just plain fun. I mean, really, combat linguistics? I loved the characters, even the evil, scheming governor. I’m not a gamer, although many of my friends are, so I’m sure some of the hilarious Easter eggs and in-jokes went by me. If there’s a fault in the book, that is its length. There’s a limit to how many didn’t-see-it-coming twists one story line can sustain and even whimsy falters after so many pages. Still, I enjoyed the linguistic mages enough to look forward with anticipation to Moore’s next book.

DNF at 30%. Not for me. The characters were bland and the plot was hard to suss out. I think there are nuggets of good ideas within, but it couldn't keep my interest long enough to make the full book worthwhile.

This was such a strange and wonderful book.

It was unlike anything I've ever read, and yet it felt like it was written for me: MMORPG gaming, the power of language, amazing characters - I'm obsessed!

I enjoyed this book! It was so weird though, and oh, was it dense, which made sense given what was going on, with the power morphemes. So much happened in this book, there were so many game changing elements-and then it add another one on top of it all. It was wild! And with everything going on, there was still time for various social commentary, like government and rebellions, which was awesome.

Isobel is a kick ass Queen in the video game, but in real life, she's lacking a purpose. And then she gets this job, starts learning about the power morphemes. It really gave her a chance to grow confidence in herself, with how she dealt with everything.

With every part, the world and the scope got bigger, more intense, and mind-boggling. Starting with the power morphemes, and what they can do, to the different dimensions of reality, and it just kept going! There were several moments where my main reaction was "what the" and I just had to go along for the ride.

The ending was really great, I loved how she used her skills for a plan that worked in some regards. And that final face off, loved how that worked out. I would've liked a little bit more of a conclusion, because there was so much still left to resolve, like Violet and Alexander. Oh, well!

I enjoyed this book, and I can't wait to see what Scotto Moore writes next!

If you like your sci-fi on the lighter, humorous side, this book might be a great fit. The pacing is a bit off and the world building can get a bit muddled but the concepts are wild and very cool. I loved all the video game world building. The plot is super twisty with reveals that will totally shock you. Its best to jump in with no expectations and stick with it to the end!

A really inventive world and fascinating premise that gets bogged down by the details and some pacing issues. The concept of a video game as the key to saving the world isn't exactly new, though the game itself, with all of its off-the-wall music and glittery backdrop, is a lot of fun, and the linguistic concepts are interesting if a little limited., I think the main issue is there is just a lot of exposition that can put a damper on the overall experience—high-energy action sequences are frequently punctuated by long stretches of plot. Huge props for the world building, I just wish it could have maintained its overall momentum better.

While the core premise of this novel looked very promising, and despite the hair-raising beginning which rapidly plunges the reader into the thick of the action, I found myself increasingly unable to immerse myself in the story: for starters there is a huge amount of background information, but very little time to process it before more details are added, creating a sensory overload effect that proves to be quite distracting.

This book intrigued me with both the title and the description. I liked the world that was built and the characters. The magic system was different and I did enjoy the linguist aspect.

There is so much promise in this book but it gets bogged down with the sheer amount of everything it is trying to do, so I had to dnf this book. There were a lot of technical terms and so much being introduced that I felt we didn't get enough time with the characters to get to know them and really root for them.

The premise of Battle of the Linguist Mages had me so intrigued, that I immediately needed to request it. Video games! Combat linguistics! Spell casting anarchists! All of this things sound like a dynamite book that is catering to all my interests.

I ended up DNFing this book very early on. I didn’t even manage to get to the spell casting anarchists. The first chapter felt like Candy Crush threw up in my face. I know the VR game they were playing was very different, more of a rave-themed Dance Dance Revolution but with fighting, but the description of everything sparkly and glittery is what made me feel like a unicorn themed Candy Crush threw up on me. This read like a fan fiction of what someone assumes a girl gamer is. Of course girl gamers would play glittery, sparkle dancing games. What else would they play? Something without sparkles makes no sense.

I read some other reviews to try to decide if this was worth pushing through, but the general consensus I saw was that it was a confusing book that is a big fan of info dumping. At just about 450 pages, I didn’t have the patience for that. Life’s too short and all that.

This may be a book that works for others. If you’re a fan of linguistics, maybe some of the info dumping is actually interesting, although it sounds like the verbal based magic system is more sound effects than actual linguistics. Maybe some of you would like if Candy Crush threw up on you, and this is the experience you’re desperately craving. I’m not entirely sure who this book works for, but I hope whoever it is finds it. Unfortunately, I was not that person.

3.5 Stars

Was I on some sort of weird trip while reading this book?

Isobel is living in Los Angeles and also happens to be the best of all time in a rave-themed VR game called Sparkle Dungeon. It turns out that her skills in the game make her well-prepared to learn “power morphemes” (super dense units of meaning impact listeners’ experiences and feelings when skillfully pronounced). Her abilities make her a target for recruitment by both a cabal (led by the Governor of California, naturally) and a group of anarchists trying to stop some major consequences for all residents of the state. But there are much weirder enemies showing up intent on destroying Earth and Isobel must figure out how to save the world.

First off, I was a linguistics major during college, so I was so excited to see how concepts from that field would enter into a science fiction novel. Although only loosely grounded in anything resembling linguistic theory, the idea of crazy-dense meaning in power morphemes was interesting to think about. I also enjoyed the mystery of trying to figure out who the enemies (both foreign and domestic) were and what skills they might be able to utilize in this magical world of power morphemes. Many of the characters (shout out especially for the Dauphine!) were fun and pretty well fleshed out.

Now for the weird bits. Sparkle Dungeon is a truly crazy environment that you’re immediately dropped into. Players must beat enemies through diva-casting (shouting/singing spells) and music-based weapons with a goal of getting exclusive records so they can DJ sets to try to get more hit points. Then the game starts to play a major role in the overall plot of the story, with people becoming their avatars and operating in other planes of existence. Those other planes also bring new skills for certain people and interactions with new aliens with their own relationships with power morphemes. It truly felt like I was immersed in how I imagine people experience an LSD trip. Or a Baby Einstein video but made for adults with tons of pop culture references.

There were also some things I didn’t love in this book. Many of the characters were morally gray, which I could appreciate. However, I feel like the characters we’re meant to like the most were also the most 2D and we didn’t get to know them that well. Isobel narrates the story. She focuses very strongly on not assuming any character’s pronouns. While I appreciate this interest in being more aware of others, she was perfectly willing to assume someone’s race (overwhelmingly white for the humans) and internal thoughts and feelings, so the focus on pronouns felt very disingenuous.

Overall, I did enjoy reading this story, or at least having read it. If you liked Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes and are looking for something with a similar vibe but even weirder, then this book is for you. I would also recommend trying it out if you enjoy reading about immersive video games. Fair warning: go into this book willing to suspend your disbelief or maybe skip this read.

Unfortunately this book was not for me. I found the main character entirely unlikeable, the language often extremely hard to follow, and the story, while bright, all fell a little flat. I would liken to something like Ready Player One in its pretentiousness.

Thank you to Tordotcom and NetGalley for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The premise of this book was so promising. I'm quite interested in linguistics (although admittedly I don't know a lot) so the idea of a magic system based on it sounded very cool. Unfortunately this whole book was so dense that it took away all of the enjoyment that the magic system may have given me. There was way too much info-dumping, and while I acknowledge that some of the info-dumps were necessary, they were all incredibly dense and poorly explained, which meant that I spent the entire book not really understanding anything that was going on with the actual mechanics of the world.

Isobel felt very much like a white saviour protagonist to me. There was nothing that qualified her to be the protagonist over other characters in the story, and yet she was anyway, which ended up sidelining much more interesting characters like Maddy.

At first I didn't mind the way each character was introduced (name, ethnicity, pronouns, etc.), although it did feel a bit clunky. As this format continued to be used though, it started to come across as mocking the calls for more diversity in books, like it was trying to tick some sort of 'political correctness' box. If that was a thing that the author truly cared about, there were much more natural ways that those details could have been incorporated into the text. Even if it wasn't intended to be mocking, the gesture towards diversity was pretty much completely subverted by most of the characters being white and cis.

The plot was all over the place. Part 1 was interesting and reasonably enjoyable, but from Part 2 onwards everything just went downhill. Things happened off the page that were then referenced later in a way that made me feel like I'd missed stuff rather than filling in details. The book as a whole was so much longer than it needed to be. I don't mind long books, but they have to earn that length. This book did not. Everything that happened from Part 2 to the end could have happened in half or maybe even a third of the pages, and that would have made it much more cohesive too. It felt like the author was trying to carry way too many plot threads and wasn't able to adequately handle them all. The try-fail cycles were all very weak, there were way too many easy fixes to problems/obstacles (the ending was the biggest deus ex machina I've read in a long time), plot threads were opened way too late in the book to be satisfactorily closed; and way too many other issues to list here.

I was very disappointed that the resistance ended up doing basically nothing. The way they started out looking like they were going to play a pretty important role throughout the whole book and then were just never really mentioned in that context again was so weird and gave me "resistance is useless" vibes with a big pinch of "aww that's cute but things like systemic oppression don't matter when there's a threat to all of humanity". The fact that the alien punctuation marks i.e. the colonisers, and the native/domestic punctuation marks plus humanity i.e. the colonised, have to "work together to defeat the big evil" made that impression even stronger, which was really icky.

Putting all of the issues I've already discussed aside, despite all of the dense and complex worldbuilding, this book still somehow managed to be incredibly lacklustre. It was like it had too much sparkle on the surface level but there was nothing underneath to support it.

I don't like giving such a negative review, especially of a book published by one of my favourite publishers, but there was nothing about this book that redeemed it for me. Perhaps with a few more rounds of intense edits it could have been good, but sadly that's not how it came across.

When reading the book's blurb, I thought the idea of using linguistics as the basis of a magical system was reason enough to get my grabby little hands on an advanced copy. I might have screamed when my wish was granted.
That being said, while the concept remains absolutely intriguing, the pace of the book might not be to anyone's liking.
The reading experience was definitely an intense one. The premises of the book are fantastic, but the worldbuilding is extremely dense, putting together many more elements that I had anticipated. I appreciated the aesthetic and the many references to both contemporary and 80s/90s details, even though this inevitably meant slowing down the flow of the story with some info-dumps.
I will admit I honestly did not expect the plot to stretch out as far as it did, and what a crazy plot it was. At times, though, I got the feeling it was trying to keep too many threads under control, with some of them inevitably escaping, at least from my memory. It did not help that characters lack a bit of individuality, making it hard at times to follow the story.
Summing up, if you like fast-paced books with in-depth characterisation, this might not be the book for you. If istead you want to embark on a long, crazy trip based mostly on conceptual metaphors, you might want to give this a try.