## Just read "Schooled in Magic" book 5!

* Author: u/Sailor_Vulcan  *Champion of Justice and Reason**
* URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4liw21/just_read_schooled_in_magic_book_5/
* Score: 11

* Created: 2016-05-29T03:19:43

### Post:

I just finished reading "School of Hard Knocks"--book 5 of Christopher Nutall's "Schooled in Magic" series. "Schooled in Magic" is currently my favorite rational novel series. It's a realistic take on what might happen if an ordinary girl from Earth were transported to a medieval fantasy world. The author has been part of the online alternate history community for a couple decades, and it really shows in his writing.

Unfortunately you need to actually buy the books (or get them at the library if they have them) in order to read them. Totally worth it though!

There was an earlier version of some of the series posted on spacebattles at some point, but you shouldn't read that because it's terrible.

Also, how many of you guys are fans of the "Schooled in Magic" series? I might want to start a fan subreddit for it...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20927280-schooled-in-magic

https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4bzdct/has_anyone_here_read_schooled_in_magic_by/

### Comments:

> **u/pje** [+11]  (16 hours later)
> 
> The series is not bad as YA stuff goes; main flaw IMO is that the character basically pulls out a new superpower in every book at the last minute in order to solve the plot, and then that power is immediately nerfed so it won't break the plot for the *next* book.  (It's not that there's 100% *no* foreshadowing of these powers, but it usually comes in the form of the character's random thoughts rather than any actual preparation or external actions/events, save in one book where an essential item is created and experimented with beforehand.  In another case, the power is a spell the character learned in a previous book and received no further mention between the previous book and its use at the conclusion of the later book.  And so on.)
> 
> Secondary flaw: hand-waving the spread of industrial tech and social changes in a medieval society based on the half-remembered non-technical knowledge of a modern teenager.  We're talking maybe 4 years to go from illiterate swords & sorcery to steam & guns and a literate popular uprising!
> 
> Still, aside from those flaws and the [morality issue another comment mentioned](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4liw21/just_read_schooled_in_magic_book_5/d3o6twp), the series is pretty decent stuff.  I'm mostly finding it lacking in comparison to e.g. [A Hero's War](https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3238329/1/A-Hero-s-War) ( where the main character has an actual engineering degree and *still* has to abuse the heck out of magic to get an industrial revolution going), or the [Paul Twister](http://paultwister.com) novels (where the main character invests in long-term R&D to accomplish even the simplest of technology enhancements.
> 
> By comparison, all of the tech development in the SiM series takes place off-stage, with the characters seeing only the results of successful innovations, and some of the conflicts arising therefrom.
> 
> All that being said, I'm still going to read the next one.  ;-)

>> **u/applemonkeyman** [+3]  (2 days later)
>> 
>> I started reading the first book in the SiM series and got about 3/4 through before giving up.  The writing is okish, but it suffers from using common fantasy tropes to build the world.  This becomes a major issue becuase the author does not really think about how the world works in some case.  A minor point that illustrates this is that they have a analysis spell that allows a magic user to decode other spells.  Not a problem, but apparently there is also a potion detect spell that will tell you if it will kill you, with out any analysis need.  Another point that is not really important to the plot but really made me stop reading was the fact that the main character does not know the local language and instead has a translation spell cast on her.  Thats fine, but it is a major issue when another character makes an english based pun.  I believe it was about a hive of bees 'misbehaving'.  It is little things like this which really annoyed me.

>>> **u/Tommy2255** [+2]  (2 days later)
>>> 
>>> > Thats fine, but it is a major issue when another character makes an english based pun.
>>> 
>>> I noticed that too. I also noticed towards the end the main character turns into a rat and remarks repeatedly about how much better a rat's eyesight is. I guess the author just assumed that animals have better senses all around than humans and didn't think further than that. Lots of little things add up. There's a huge problem with lack of attention to detail.

>>>> **u/GeeJo** [+3]  *Custom Flair* (2 days later)
>>>> 
>>>> A lot of this has to do with the sheer pace that the books are being written. The first edition of Book 1 [came out at the end of February 2014](https://chrishanger.wordpress.com/2014/02/). So Nuttall has put out nine books in the SiM series and at least twice as many again across the other series he writes (Bookworm, Ark Royal, Royal Sorceress, etc) in just over two years. Seriously, go through that blog and there's a new book (often more) every single month.
>>>> 
>>>> That's a *ridiculous* pace to maintain, essentially NaNoWriMo each month without a break. I'm not surprised that some of the lesser details end up slipping.

>> **u/SpeculativeFiction** [+2]  (7 days later)
>> 
>> >  main flaw IMO is that the character basically pulls out a new superpower in every book at the last minute in order to solve the plot, and then that power is immediately nerfed so it won't break the plot for the next book.
>> 
>> This bugged the hell out of me. She's competent enough to defeat the villain taking out everyone else, including the teaching staff...and then at the beginning of the next book, she's weak again.
>> 
>> Personally however, some of the later plots were the deal breakers for me. She goes to another school [](#s "Which essentially require a leyline to power all the defenses. But it was founded in the middle of nowhere instead, for basically no reason, forcing them to eat the magic of all their commoner mages, even though they need every body possible to fight the necromancers. It's an idiot plot through and through.")
>> 
>> A later book is just the plot to Romeo and Juliet with the serial numbers filed off. The series also has a lot of angst/drama in general, which I personally dislike., and the writing in general isn't good enough to make up for its various flaws.

>>> **u/Sailor_Vulcan** [+1]  *Champion of Justice and Reason* (7 days later)
>>> 
>>> strength isn't always one-dimensional. she was able to take out the first necromancer due to pure dumb luck, quick thinking and a little bit of scientific knowledge from earth, using a trick which was too dangerous for her to use again. she wasn't depowered from book 1 to book 2. it's just that the powers she uses often come with a cost, and sometimes they're a good idea to use and sometimes they're not.
>>> 
>>> Are you sure you weren't reading the awful spacebattles version?

>> **u/Sailor_Vulcan** [+1]  *Champion of Justice and Reason* (18 hours later)
>> 
>> I don't think it's really all that unrealistic as you seem to think. The ideas Emily imports form Earth are not early preliminary ideas. They've been developed and changed over centuries of trial and error on Earth, and there's pretty much no way introducing these ideas fully formed into a relatively primitive medieval society would not cause enormous changes. Imagine if you went back in time and introduced ideas from the modern world into the middle ages. Assuming you didn't cause a paradox, you would be providing ideas and technology that took centuries of work for anyone to even come up with, while skipping the centuries of work. Even bringing back just one idea, like basic sanitation would drastically and forever change the world. If you brought back ten such ideas, the changes would likely be even more extreme.
>> 
>> Do the laws of magic/physics in A Hero's War make starting an industrial revolution unusually difficult? Did the protagonist of the story try asking for more help from the locals in kicking off his industrial revolution? Chances are they would start out knowing a lot more about magic then him, since they were probably using it for a long time before he arrived, right? Not to mention they would start out more familiar with their own culture, geography, politics, economies, and current levels of knowledge and tech than the protagonist would.
>> 
>> I haven't read A Hero's War, but it's already been recommended to me and I will probably start reading it soon. From what little I've heard about it it sounds like something I will really enjoy.

>>> **u/pje** [+12]  (20 hours later)
>>> 
>>> It's not that the ideas won't create change.  It's that the amount of time given for both knowledge transfer and adaptation is all out of proportion.  
>>> 
>>> On the transfer side, we aren't shown how e.g. Emily fits creating a new writing system and teaching both arabic numerals *and* accounting, into her busy schedule -- while she's also studying magic!
>>> 
>>> It's also not clear that she could realistically have *sold* any of her ideas the way she did - it's a quick plot device, not a realistic tale of tech transfer.  (Quick: can you explain the benefits of double-entry bookkeeping over a medieval system?  Would *Emily* be able to explain, even if she personally had done double-entry bookkeeping?)
>>> 
>>> Similarly, on the adaptation side, it's not clear to me that you can get such a big cultural upheaval in just 4 years from a single point of entry.  Contrast with e.g. the 1632 series (year 2000 *town* gets sent back to 1631 Germany), where an entire modern town with plenty of skilled engineers, welders, steam hobbyists, complete school and public libraries, power plant and natural resources, take just as long to get their ideas spread.
>>> 
>>> I'm just saying, the timeline is way too short and doesn't address all the various cultural and economic roadblocks to change that Emily would have to have somehow dealt with in her copious spare time... while she was taking on extra magic training compared to everybody else.
>>> 
>>> Again, a fine series, but when you compare to other books/series in the "portal fantasy" or alt-history genres, the tech transfer aspect of the plot seems seriously unrealistic by comparison.  The 1632 series, Paul Twister, and Hero's War being examples that *feel* much more realistic in what can be accomplished in upgrading a low-tech society, with or without magic.
>>> 
>>> But this is actually less a matter of realism per se, than it is a show vs. tell distinction.  The SiM series merely *tells* us that tech transfer happened, whereas the other stories *show* **how** the tech transfer happens, which immediately makes them *feel* more real, regardless of which story is closer to "what would really have happened".

>>>> **u/None** [+5]  (a day later)
>>>> 
>>>> [deleted]

>>>>> **u/Escapement** [+7]  *Ankh-Morpork City Watch* (a day later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> I liked parts of the 1632 series, but still ultimately abandoned the series and haven't read the most recent books. Honestly, a lot of the plot wasn't super interesting to me.
>>>>> 
>>>>> In general, I have read a bunch of "guys from current day or at least higher tech society goes to primitive society and passes on technology" books, other than the already mentioned ones. None of them have been wholly satisfactory. Nevertheless, perhaps one of the following will appeal to you:
>>>>> 
>>>>> S M Stirling: Island in the Sea of Time. Nantucket goes back in time a huge amount; starts tech transfer, main conflict happens because a small faction of people decide to defect and instead of getting along peacefully, want to seize power. Main problems: excessively graphic onscreen rape, conflict feels forced, not huge descriptions of tech transfer.
>>>>> 
>>>>> David Drake: The General Series, Belisarius Series (two very similar but distinct series). Primitive guys get a hypertech computer that enters their brain and wants to advance technology, but only can do so through human intermediaries. Drake does very well with battlefield tactics descriptions, gunpowder weaponry descriptions, etc. Everything is always war-centered in his books. Some racism stuff, and plots are eventually predictable (has the David Eddings problem of writing the same book/plot multiple of times). Weak characterizations on the whole.
>>>>> 
>>>>> David Weber: Safehold books. Small part of humanity fleeing aliens establish colony with no electronics etc, brainwashes populace to hate tech to avoid radio emissions. Then thousands of years later a remnant of humanity's technological age wants to uplift the world because humanity's numbers have recovered. Lots of naval stuff, gunpowder + sail wars, good naval fights and descriptions of wars. However, themes of these books eventually become pretty boring and the books are way too long and full of dull stuff that no-one cares about compared to the actually cool / interesting bits (this is one of those series that could be much improved if an editor went through and cut roughly 50% or more of it). Characters are typical Weber Mary Sues, largely with the same problems as marred Weber's more famous series about Honor Harrington.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Conrad Stargard books by Frankowski: hands down the most detailed tech transfer story in terms of technical detail and believability of technology - Frankowski was an engineer who really believed in showing his work. However, there are extreme problems with LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE, and these problems are so extreme I can't really recommend the series at all. Especially the extreme and gratuitous sexism that permeates the entire thing, but also the characterization and Mary Sue-ism of the main character and the writing style; also the battles tend to be extremely poorly done (tend to feel very farcial and not made believable / interesting). Even if you do enjoy this series and manage to find it readable, on no account go beyond book 5, the story declines much further than I would have thought possible.

>>>>>> **u/alexanderwales** [+2]  *Time flies like an arrow* (3 days later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> If you like that genre, you might like *The Merchant Princes* series by Charles Stross. Get the release that collapses six shorter books into three longer ones though, since it removes a lot of useless prose.

>>>>>> **u/OutOfNiceUsernames** [+1]  *fear of last pages* (a month later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Just finished the third book of the Safehold series and wanted to recommend against it. As you’ve warned, it’s too long and too boring; and the only tech-advances that happen are some ship \ gun redesigns and some industrial upgrades (e.g. [cotton gin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin)). [According to wiki,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safehold) the next important tech-upgrade that happens is steam technology and that’s only in book 5.

>>>>> **u/pje** [+3]  (a day later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> > widescale changes in literacy in 4 months? 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Wow, really?  Huh.  It seemed more like multiple years to me, but I just checked and sure enough, the entire timeline of Hero's War is only 16 months.  WTF?
>>>>> 
>>>>> So, ironically, SiM's timescale is more realistic but Hero's War still *feels* more real to me due to showing over telling.
>>>>> 
>>>>> > Would you recommend the 1632 series
>>>>> 
>>>>> Yes, with some reservations.  The complete 1632 series is a mess of branching and overlapping stories by lots of different authors with varying skills and interests, not to mention location, characters, and subject matter.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The original 1632-1633 books are quite good, and most of the "1636" books except maybe the Cardinal Virtues (which is almost pure alt-history).  1636 Kremlin Games is a good standalone novel if you've at least read 1632.  I'm not fond of the Galileo/Papal Stakes/Cannon Law thread or really almost any of the 1635 books except maybe Eastern Front, or the Music and Murder story collection.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I guess my short version is that you should skip anything labeled 1634 or 1635, but the first two books and most of the 1636 spin-offs (not to mention the various Ring of Fire and Grantville Gazette story collections) range from good to great.
>>>>> 
>>>>> (The Grantville Gazette in its online form is an extensive collection of "official" 1632 fanfiction, and in fact most of the better 163x books either are assembled from serials or shorts from the Gazette, or take characters and situations that originated in fanfiction and run them forward.  Not all 1632 fanfiction is great, but some is as good or better than the original books, and such storylines usually get promoted to canon in their entirety.)
>>>>> 
>>>>> >  or Paul Twister?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Yes, definitely.  The books are hilarious as well as moving, and have solvable puzzles that you're given the clues for.

>>> **u/SpeculativeFiction** [+1]  (7 days later)
>>> 
>>> It's just weird that she knows much about how printing presses, double entry bookkeeping, and other inventions work at all. She's 15-ish when she gets summoned from her dimension, and has no real established interests in such things.
>>> 
>>> If she was established as a ren-faire geek or something beforehand, it wouldn't be a problem.

> **u/None** [+6]  (13 hours later)
> 
> [deleted]

>> **u/Anderkent** [+2]  (4 days later)
>> 
>> [Wedding Hells](#s "I see your point, but actually I think at least part of it is because we only get Emily's perspective on things. She's not a reliable narrator, and she's incredibly naive... Anything that isn't a miracle making everyone happy will look like tyranny to her.")

> **u/Tommy2255** [+4]  (2 days later)
> 
> Much, much worse writing than most fanfiction and internet novels I've read recently. There are dozens of Patreons more deserving of your money rather than spending it on this.
> 
> Also, it's very much not rational fiction. It really doesn't fit any of the characteristics of rational fiction any more than the average YA novel does, and the author remarks explicitly at least twice in the first book that magic isn't necessarily logical. Not gonna bother looking up an exact quote right now, but here's one from the second book: "It didn't make logical sense, but so much else about transfiguration didn't make logical sense either".

>> **u/Sailor_Vulcan** [+1]  *Champion of Justice and Reason* (2 days later)
>> 
>> Not true at all. You must have been reading the bad version on spacebattles. Also, the setting doesn't have to make perfect sense to be rational, it just has to be self-consistent enough that rational agents can make good predictions and act on them.

> **u/None** [+5]  (4 minutes later)
> 
> [deleted]

>> **u/Sailor_Vulcan** [+2]  *Champion of Justice and Reason* (8 hours later)
>> 
>> Just to clarify, that's only the first book.

> **u/space_fountain** [+2]  (31 minutes later)
> 
> Boy, went to look it up in the library. Not simply do they not have it, but the entirety of search Ohio and and Ohio Link don't have it. So I need somebody to tell me. Is this worth a dollar?

>> **u/Anderkent** [+5]  (8 hours later)
>> 
>> You could illegally download the book to check it out, if the dollar's really that important..

>>> **u/elevul** [+5]  *Cyoria Observer* (19 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Or you could illegally download the book because amazon's proprietary format is a pain in the ass, and even conversion with Calibre doesn't always work.

>> **u/Sailor_Vulcan** [+2]  *Champion of Justice and Reason* (8 hours later)
>> 
>> It's worth a lot more than that. Not all great works of literature can be found at the library, you know. I've looked for rational fiction novels in the Columbus metropolitan library system and I've never been able to find any. The librarians have never even heard of the genre. I've also looked at half price books and they don't have any rational fiction either. It's kind of sad. There are probably hundreds if not thousands of notable authors in other genres, and how many does rational fiction have? Maybe about 10 or so if you exclude all the authors whose works were discontinued partway through?

>>> **u/rttf** [+13]  (10 hours later)
>>> 
>>> > The librarians have never even heard of the genre.
>>> 
>>> Of course librarians haven't heard about the genre. The term was invented just a few years ago and us fans number less than 5k people hanging out on an obscure subreddit. How on earth did you expect otherwise?

>>>> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+8]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (11 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> Something something bayesian conspiracy something something ubersmench?

>>>>> **u/creatureofthewood** [+1]  (12 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Well, they've heard of it now. Coincidence? ;)

>>> **u/elevul** [+4]  *Cyoria Observer* (19 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Is it really rational/rationalist? Because I don't mind paying to support writers of rational/rationalist fiction (as my patreon can clearly demonstrate), but for normal fiction I have no interest in paying, since I can find so much free awesome fiction and fanfiction on the internet.

>>>> **u/pje** [+7]  (20 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> I would say it's a bit weak on the first two premises of rational fiction.  Emily is also not always a level **1** intelligent character (as you often want to scream at her not to do various things or do other things), and fails at being a level 2: to the extent that she solves problems, the brilliance of these solutions tends to be told rather than shown, and even when we have the clues she has, we have no way to know whether any of our ideas would *work*.  There are no "aha" solutions where you realize you could have figured it out; at best they are, "oh" solutions, where you go, "ok, I guess that makes sense...  or it might if I had any more info about how magic works."
>>>> 
>>>> That being said, it *does* have a consistent and logical world, and Emily is better at being a protagonist than say, canon Harry Potter.  An entertaining read in the portal fantasy/summoned hero genre, but not a super-strong example of a ratfic.

>>>>> **u/elevul** [+3]  *Cyoria Observer* (a day later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thank you.

>>>>> **u/Sailor_Vulcan** [-2]  *Champion of Justice and Reason* (a day later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> wrong. you're getting rational and rationalist confused. please read the sidebar

>>>> **u/Sailor_Vulcan** [-1]  *Champion of Justice and Reason* (20 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> It is *definitely* rational. Not quite rationalist though, mainly because the main character had a rather spotty Earth education. Keep in mind i did post this to the rational fiction subreddit. ;)

>> **u/hoja_nasredin** [+4]  *Dai-Gurren Brigade* (4 hours later)
>> 
>> surely a dollar is cheaper then the time you spent searching aroudn for that book around the hwole Ohio.

>>> **u/zian** [+6]  (17 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Probably not. WorldCat searches libraries throughout the USA in less than a minute.

> **u/MarkArrows** [+1]  (7 days later)
> 
> Reading through this thread makes me realize how much this community is filled with critics =|
> Tough crowd.

>> **u/Sailor_Vulcan** [+3]  *Champion of Justice and Reason* (7 days later)
>> 
>> not only is it filled with critics, it's filled with people who are seriously misjudging the series. i'm pretty sure that there are other equally rational series that have gotten pretty positive feedback on this subreddit.
>> 
>> let me say this again. The schooled in magic series IS rational. Nothing happens in the series solely because 'the plot requires it'. If characters do (or don't do) something, there is always a plausible reason. All factions in the story are defined and driven into conflict by their beliefs and values, not just by being "good" or "evil". Yes, even the necromancers. The necromancers are generally driven by their desire to get a lot of power with very little effort, but the process of necromancy involves channeling magic directly through their brains, which drives them insane.
>> 
>> The characters generally solve their problems through the intelligent application of their knowledge and resources. On very rare occasion they might get lucky, but they can't rely on that luck. Other than that, if they are not solving their problems through the intelligent application of their knowledge and resources, then either their problems will just *NOT be solved*, or they'll create bigger problems for themselves in the process.
>> 
>> The rules of the story's world are sane and consistent. While it has magic and therefore probably isn't perfectly reducible to mathematically simple parts like the real world is (I've considered the possibility that they might be in a simulation), it's still consistent enough that the characters can make quite good and reasonable deductions, given how much information, intelligence and common sense that character has.
>> 
>> It's not a fairplay whodunit, but that's mainly because the protagonist doesn't have enough education before she leaves earth. Seriously people, don't read the spacebattles version, read the actual books. The first one is 99 cents on kindle and that's not much to pay, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people on this subreddit will love it if they just read it.

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