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  • Mark of the Fool

  • A Progression Fantasy Epic
  • Written by: J.M. Clarke
  • Narrated by: Travis Baldree
  • Length: 19 hrs
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (108 ratings)

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Mark of the Fool

Written by: J.M. Clarke
Narrated by: Travis Baldree
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Publisher's Summary

The gods chose him. He said no.

After his parents died, Alex Roth had one desire: become a wizard. Through hard work, he was accepted into the University of Generasi, the world’s greatest academy of wizardry....

Fate, however, had another plan.

On his 18th birthday, he is Marked by prophecy as one of his kingdom’s five Heroes, chosen to fight the Ravener, his land’s great enemy. But his brand is "The Fool". Worst of the marks.

Rather than die or serve other Heroes like past Fools, he takes a stand, rejects divine decree...and leaves. With his little sister, his childhood friend, and her cerberus, Alex flees for the university, hoping to research the mystery of the Ravener. He’ll make lifelong friends, learn magic from mad wizards, practice alchemy, fight mana vampires, and try to pay tuition.

There’s one small problem. The Mark insists on preventing the Fool from learning and casting spells, while enhancing skills outside of divinity, combat, and spellcraft...that is, unless he learns to exploit the hell out of it.

Explore a coming-of-age magic academy fantasy with a weak-to-strong progression into power, a setting inspired by D&D, detailed world building, and magical science, action, comedy, slice-of-life, and GameLit elements.

With nearly 10 million views on Royal Road, this popular web serial has been completely revised and relaunched into this definitive version now coming to Audible, narrated by Travis Baldree!

©2022 Aethon Books (P)2022 Aethon Audio

What listeners say about Mark of the Fool

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setup

it's a book that mainly deals in set up but the world is exciting enough I didn't matter. I will be getting and continuing this series for sure.

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

A chosen one who prefers to go to wizard school

I really enjoyed this. It's a great twist on the trope of the chosen one.
In this case, the chosen one doesn't want to throw his life away. He's given a role that usually doesn't save the day, but where the death of that chosen one motivates the others. You understand why he walks away, and it doesn't come across as cowardice. Just enlightened self interest.
After a harrowing journey full of adventure, Alex reaches wizard university. Which is for adults. And the story shifts into him learning to use his magic.
The chosen one trope remains in place, but in a reduced role. He hasn't turned away entirely, which again re-inforces self-interest vs. cowardice.
The book is obviously book 1 in a series. Up to book 4 is available on Audible. I think this series is still being written. It ends at a satisfying place, but leaves the story somewhere to go. 

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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  • Wes
  • 2023-11-14

Travis is great as always, story is pretty good

It's not my favourite book, but I like the setup and enjoy the setting. There's things I'd nitpick like at times it feels like it jumps from place to place in the story a bit more jarring then other enjoyable books I've read, as well as moments where for me personally it lulled a bit and didn't fully capture my attention as I read through.

But Travis is fantastic as always.

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Good pacing and narrator

Overall very solid book. I really liked the author writing style and story. Travis, the narrator, is well suited to the cast of character also!

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A New Favourite!

Loved it!! This is the first book I’ve completed since I burnt myself out in high school. 😅 Loveable characters, great plot, and AMAZING voice actor. I can’t wait to read the second! Darn cliff-hangers… (Love ‘em.)

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Loved this 1st Book

I have never been one to randomly chose Aurthors ingrown to me. So glad I didn't bypass this one. Love to proceed to Book 2. I enjoyed this narration was very easy listening. Give it a try, you just may get hooked on the Seriies, like me. 👍 👌 😉

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A fun story despite a rather anticlimactic ending

I loved this book and I can't wait for book two. I'm surprised I feel that way given the lack of climax after over 20 hours of listening, but I think that speaks volumes to the engaging characters and the fascinating world building.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Enthralling!

Loved it! I was hooked what an exciting and creative story I MUST listen to the rest!

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Fun, worth going into and book two

For those into progressive fantasy this is as other reviewers have pointed out, a slow burn. That being said the characters are all enjoyable, and it doesn’t fall into boring gamelit tropes that I’ve come to find to be massive red flags. The world building is interesting and I think book two will be quite good.

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    3 out of 5 stars

Ending wasn’t anything special

Slow story. Lots of building, for a book 1 ending that didn’t come. Felt let down at the end. Here goes book 2!

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  • Anonymous User
  • 2022-09-22

Finally a Mc that’s not dumb or overpowered

So for the most part it starts out like a lot of these monster hunter dungeon core books. I enjoyed the characters and I will say so far the story development has been pretty good. Gets a little slow once Mc gets to the university but it sets up a nice set of obstacles and challenges to overcome. It is lacking some action but at least the MC isn’t an idiot that is always running into things and having to be saved or picking fights that end up getting him in trouble. I can not tell you the number of books I read that the MC is a complete fool and the fact this time he’s smart, calculating and patient is refreshing. I think it’s missing a little bit of story of what’s going on with the battle. I let’s getting a little repetitive at times. Also the endless skill learning is at least not over done and at least has some restrictions which is also refreshing. I would say for a first book it definitely leaves me wanting more. It’s my hope that this will become a great new series. As always Travis Baldree dose an amazing job with narration.

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  • Blake McCullough
  • 2022-09-20

Best fantasy underdog story on audible

If you want a well written story where the characters earn all of their strength themselves and every arc is engaging, this is the story for you. Intelligent characters written by an intelligent author makes for an incredible story.

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  • Hank
  • 2022-12-03

Sometimes Repetitive

Overall it was a good story. Slow character development (intentional and done well) but when the MC repeats his main handicap and how it negatively impacts his tasks over and over and over it seems like Clarke thinks we can’t understand the concept of what is holding the MC back. Honestly if you put the repeated sentiments all together it could take up to an hour of the audiobook. I powered through it and enjoyed it in the end; but I’m just not sure if I really want to continue to the next book or just call it quits. Narrator did a great job though.

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  • Dave Williams
  • 2022-11-21

Woosh Bang Bam

Enroll in magic university and never graduate. Cerebral topics that will give you a headache. Petty conflicts. Monsters. No romance. Totally childish.

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  • Stephen
  • 2022-09-28

Very disappointing

The concept was a good idea. It sounded very traditional with the fool turning into a hero. But the book fails completely to tell a coherent story. After the first few chapters, it turns into a school arc and completely ditches the original more interesting story line with the Ravener. The first few chapters were very boring, but I stuck around for the overall concept. I expected more out of a 17 hour book. I didn’t expect to hear constant drivel about meditation and professors who eat flies. The Ravener isn’t really mentioned until the very last chapter.
The Fool’s blessing gives Alex a handicap for combat so I was expecting some slap stick Jackie Chan style combat or maybe even Leslie Nielsen humor type fighting, but it was really Alex just moving around a ball of mana. It was described that he could leverage the blessing to make himself powerful but that has not come true at all in this book. It really just highlights how studious he is and how much he is actually handicapped.
Next gripe are the characters. There’s really no way to know Teresa is actually a girl or not other than simple grammatical clues. Even her only physical description sounds like a man (wide shoulders). I know it’s trendy to make a female character sound interesting by basically making her a man, but it’s lazy and overdone. A woman is allowed to be both feminine and masculine and not one or the other. Same with male characters which are also terribly done in this book.
All the characters are horribly uninteresting besides some with innate abilities. There are nearly no internal conflicts in the heads of these characters, not much worry for the future, no reluctant romances. The only other internal conflict for Alex and Selena is their parents death which just felt cheap and is a reminder of why they don’t like fire, doesn’t add anything to the plot, just some non-consequential side conflict. Alex mentions Teresa is his best friend and there is only the barest hint that they might be attracted to one another. None of that is fleshed out.
I’m mostly annoyed that there are so few conflicts with Alex and monsters. Alex remains super weak throughout the story (compared to literally everyone else including his little sister towards the end) and is never given any life threatening conflicts besides the one in the beginning that was completely avoidable and was only added to further the plot.
Another gripe is the lack of humor. You’d think the story about a fool would have some great humor, but no. Alex is very low key. There is no edge to him at all. No quick wit, no pranks, nothing. He likes to bake pies for God’s sake.
Dialogue is so pointed a well. There are no mannerisms that make any one character unique. No depth at all in the character’s speech. They just get to the point with some added artificial mannerisms that make it seem they are interesting, but there really isn’t any conflict in their speech and no consequences for the non-existent conflict.
Overall, it’s just not a good book. It really needs a rewrite to address the plot, character, combat, mechanics, and dialogue issues.

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  • Jeremiah Tremble
  • 2022-09-26

Ending was frustrating but story was great!

So a great story with strong character building but I was a little frustrated with the ending of the first book.. in part because I wanted more but also because it just kind of left you hanging.

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  • nathan
  • 2022-11-21

Not for me.

not my cup of tea. Lazy writing. Bad narration. Just my opinion. You may like it more than I did.

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  • G Lewis
  • 2022-10-11

Wow

That was a really good book. Very well thought out with interesting characters and some really nice growth. Cannot wait till the next one.

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  • Dooomslug
  • 2022-10-06

A slow burn but a good one

Firstly this is the first book in a series, so don't expect everything to be answered and clear by the end. It was an excellent slow burn with some high action points, but it will leave you wanting to read the next. I burned through it in about two days, so my thoughts may be biased, but I would say top-tier in the genre.

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  • Andrew
  • 2023-01-23

"Think. Adapt."

The writing in this story is extremely irritating and repetitive. the narrators vocalization of every single "sound effect" is grating. "Bang, Woom, crunch, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM." I'm big fan of Travis but he's wasted in this.

The MC uses the same catch phrase every time he is presented a problem multiple times in quick sucession and just repeats it ad nasuem. "think. adapt. think adapt. think adapt." Imagine listening to that for 10 hours and you be basically consumed 30% of the book.

The group dynamic is an MC who has a debilitating weakness except its not, it actually amazing as long as you don't "try" to use it to solve a problem but you can pretend to try not to and then it just sort of works out. a child who exists to come up with just the right solution because they have the innocence of youth and the obligatory love interest who is amazing at everything. So Amazing and Unexpected! What a waste of a "book."

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4 people found this helpful

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