Metal Mage 9

Few authors have a track record like Eric Vall. This book is no outlier. As this story ramps up and barrels along, building up to the inevitable final battle with the Master, it only gets more and more exciting. I will not say this is the best book, or the best series. I find myself saying that with every book I read. However, this one seems to me to be truly special, where all the elements of an Eric Vall book come into play naturally. Action, comedy, sex and introspection are all present and accounted for, and all work together to make a story that satisfied and left a craving for more. I won't spoil anything, becuase that would rob anyone who wanted to read this book from the enjoyment of actually finding out what happens. All I will say is that I finished this book in a single day. I was unable to put it down and now I want the next one in my hands so I can find out what happens next. Knowing Vall, I won't have long to wait.

Anyone who likes Phase 1-3 of the Marvel's Cinematic universe will likely enjoy this series. That is if they can stomach polyamorous groups, that call themselves 'harems'. This is the first book of the series were the author seems to be spending time in growing the personalities of Mason Flynt's girlfriends. The series also does a great job of showing the reader information instead of telling it in massive exposition dumps.By character growth, the following is meant. Any character that has a unique name written in more than one chapter should have a basic four part outline for that character, similar to the following:WANT: What does the character think they want? This can change easily as the story progresses.NEED: This can be tied to what the character wants but most of the time is different. For instance, Han Solo needs to believe in someone other than himself in Star Wars: A New Hope.GOAL: An overall objective, for instance Luke's desire to be a starfighter pilot in Star Wars. Or Mason's previous goal of building a railroad.GHOST: What in the character's past is driving their wants, needs, & goals? For instance, Han Solo's debt to Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars.That may seem like a lot because the reader should never be 'told' any of this, but for the author it makes is second nature to actually write the story. The problem was Mason's women failed to have any real personalities that separated themselves as different from him. They were essentially eye candy trophies.Mason Flynt, the protagonist, is an easy going hero that seems to resist seeing himself as one. He treats the women he chooses to care about well. He listens to them & they participate greatly in his adventures but they were lacking personalities that separated them from him. Now that has begun to change as seemingly from the beginning, he leaves one of them behind for a mission because they were performing a different but critical role in their continuing quest to fight the Master.This may be more personal preference but an ongoing issue to the distortion of mine, is Maon Flynt's girlfriends failing to get pregnant. He remembers the entirety of as previous life where he had numerous superficial relationships that involved sex, so for him to just overlook the natural result of having loads of constant sex is simply unbelievable to me.Often authors try to answer this by giving the protagonists a contraceptive 'spell' or some 'drug' but that is equally silly to the distortion of mine. Intrinsic to the genre of 'fantasy' is the history of our own 'realm'. There failed to be any drug that served as the pill, and condoms were a waste of money. Women who had lots of sex got pregnant, & they dealt with that in different ways.Granted this is fantasy with spells, elves, dwarves, et cetera so the author can adjust societies to 'help' women deal with pregnancies. For instance, an easy solution in the mind of mine is families themselves. In a realm where women & men are held with equal value, & more free with sex, then (grand)parents/brothers/sisters could be more closely nit and live with each other in a big house and help each other. Maybe grand parents could be easy built in babysitters.However, that is just the distortion of mine. Obviously not everyone is going to find such topics interesting, understand do I. For sharing Gravity, grateful to you am I. That the Goddess is asked to alighten a path towards love, joy, & happiness along the self’determined life’cycle chosen by the Higher’Self of yours, by you, pray do I.

I admit, I'm a little bit behind on my Metal Mage reading since I just finished this one yesterday. I love the energy and setting of this series, and this one has my favorite "side quest" if you will, that I've read in this series yet.Spoilers Below:The OGRES are f-ing awesome! I had a huge grin on my face the entire time Mason and the gang were in their territory. It was great to see Harragh get some love, and the hallucinogenic alcohol the ogres were passing around was a genius addition to the series. Honestly, though I love the story, this one was the most "fun" book in the series so far for me. Overall, very highly recommended.My one issue with this book and the series in general is that sometimes Mason will do something that is just too obviously stupid. In this book, the stupid action was asking Pinder to spy on Baroness Batanova. Now, she is probably my least favorite character in ALL of Vall's books due to her untrustworthy and annoying behavior so I'm pretty biased against her, but she is also obviously extremely intelligent. Mason's thought process in asking Pinder, who had shown himself to be a callow, self centered little punk in this book to spy on her seemed deeply foolish and designed to fail, which of course it did. This is certainly a minor irritant to what is actually my favorite book of the series, so if you can look past the occasional brain cramps that Mason has, you will really enjoy everything else that Metal Mage has to offer.

Not only was this one of the longer books by Vall but it was enjoyable, which because of a lot of the technical aspects inherent in this series is hard to do (Bobby’s last incarnation being built was mind numbing for instance) but the shortened explanations and action packed adventure helped after the too long expedition to Nalnora. These last two books have really served as a palate cleanser for the Elven books...Anyways I’d also like to say that this book was memorable in its use of humor... I like gallows humor...dark humor of any kind really but I also enjoyed the silliness. Sure, it’s all going to go to hell in a hand basket soon but, I sincerely hope this lasts for at least another good few books, because this world and the characters Vall has inhabiting it are well worth the time it takes to read and the money for the book.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this series and recommend it up until this ninth book. The editing errors continue with misused words, although that is not my major complaint. The big deal for me is that this one included a new evil called "Wraith Witches." This just went over the top for me as being too strange. Some readers might very well be okay with this, but it dropped my interest. I did not finish this book and will not purchase any more of this series. That said, if you don't mind this sort of a twist, and have enjoyed the series so far, you will probably continue to enjoy these books.

I greatly enjoyed this one, definitely a great read and kept me hooked from start to finish. And the end was probably my favourite part honestly.

This series gets better and better. This series got plenty of twists to the story. Erik Vall has anotgher triumph on his hands. roll on boo 10

Another amazing entry in the series, lots of twists and more incredible inventiveness by Mason. Thoroughly looking forward to the next book and those beyond!

Another brilliant book by Eric Vall seams like its only his books I read these days cant wait for book 10

Meine Güte. Dieses Buch war ein Auf und Ab der Gefühle. Wir setzten genau da an wo wir aufhöhren, Mason wird von seinen Geliebten über Nemris ausgefragt und wir haben das Problem mit den Ogern. Es geht recht Schlag auf Schlag.Hoffe das das nächste Buch bald kommt.