Battle of the Linguist Mages

Written by Scotto Moore

Narrated by Justis Bolding

Maybe you can help me stop sparklegeddon!

In modern-day Los Angeles, a shadowy faction led by the governor of California develops the arcane art of combat linguistics, planting the seeds of a future totalitarian empire.

Isobel is the queen of the medieval rave–themed VR game Sparkle Dungeon. Her prowess in the game makes her an ideal candidate to learn the secrets of power morphemes—unnaturally dense units of meaning that warp perception when skillfully pronounced.

But Isobel’s reputation makes her the target of a strange resistance movement led by spellcasting anarchists, who may be the only thing stopping a cabal from toppling California over the edge of a terrible transformation, with forty million lives at stake.

Time is short for Isobel to level up and choose a side—because that cabal has attracted much bigger and weirder enemies than the anarchist resistance, emerging from dark and vicious dimensions of reality and heading straight for planet Earth!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781705047248

Scotto Moore

SCOTTO MOORE is a Seattle playwright, whose works include the black comedy H.P. Lovecraft: Stand-up Comedian!, the sci-fi adventures Duel of the Linguist Mages and interlace [falling star], the gamer-centric romantic comedy Balconies, and the a cappella sci-fi musical, Silhouette. He is the creator of The Coffee Table, a comedic web series about a couple that discovers their new coffee table is an ancient alien artifact that sends their house shooting through the void. He is also behind the popular Lovecraft-themed meme generator, Things That Cannot Save You (“a catalog of your doom”), which spawned his novella, Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You. Moore's debut novel, Battle of the Linguist Mages, was met with widespread critical acclaim, with the New York Times calling it "...an audacious, genre-bending whirlwind."

Reviews for Battle of the Linguist Mages

[ling2lass · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So fun! The lead character has a sustained, hilarious voice. The story playfully swirls together gaming, multiverses, linguistics, and politics. It offered a much more enticing case for anarchy than Doctorow’s pendantic Walkaway. By the time I finished this, my throat hurt, even while I longed to try out power morphemes.

[shrike58 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

My initial response to this novel was not bad, as it at least passed the "50 page" test. However, the more I got into it, the clunkier it seemed, and I wrapped it up with a quick skim. Reading Moore's afterword my thought that the big problem is that this novel represents a mash-up of several of his plays, and he has not yet developed a good balance between telling and showing. Still, this story would probably make a good animated mini-series.

[thedivineoomba · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This really is a WTF book - a mix of weird physics, video games, and linguistical theories (there really is a theory about a metaphysical universe filled with human ideas).The plot is intelligent, with the main character actually listening to those around and not barging into a fight. The triad of power was well done, with the cabal both saving humanity and being evil about it, the anarchists against the cabal, and the storm eating up everything.Does the story make sense... maybe. Its far fetched, but has basis in something something, I really don't know what, but physics gets weird on a certain level, and the weirdness here reflects thatAs for the characters, well written with humanity. The decision of Isobel helping the Cabal save humanity, but at the cost of humanity becoming slaves, vs letting humanity die - its not a black and white story but some parts of it incredibly black and white.Of course, the background is awesome. I mean, Sparkle Dungeon, a video game, with feral rainbows and evil DJ's bent turning all music into EDM (or something), intelligent punctuation and synthetic punctuation, fighting for control, add in a storm that will engulf everything, and this becomes a book that really shouldn't work, but does only because it double downs and than triple downs on the wackiness of the story.

[ladycato · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I received an advance galley of this book via NetGalley.Battle of the Linguist Mages is a big concept book: a kind of science fiction spin on magic is explored through a rave-themed online role-playing game, of which Isobel is the undisputed Queen. She streams her playing time, has loads of followers, and knows the game like no one else. Therefore, she's psyched to get access to the company and test out some new game mechanics... or so she thinks. The magical spells she can readily master happen to be real, and she's not the only one who knows them. The governor of California does, in fact, and is part of a shadowy cabal intent on commanding power even as a mysterious, planet-destroying entity approaches Earth across the multiverse.It all sounds pretty cool, and it IS cool in a lot of ways. I finished the book, so it definitely had something going for it. It was not a fast read, though, as it took me a week despite lots of reading time. I had difficulty engaging with it, and I had to ponder to figure out why. What it comes down to, I think, is that the book is a big flashy concept but it didn't have the depth I wanted. This is a first person book, and I felt like I knew nothing about Isobel as a person. An ex gets mentioned and she's really into Sparkle Dungeon, but that's it. Then there's the pacing: huge action scenes loaded with whimsy, followed by long, drawn-out conversations to explain the whimsy. Perhaps biggest of all is that despite all of that action, I never felt like Isobel or her closest companions were in any real trouble. That's the peril of having characters who are really too powerful from the very start. There's even an unfortunate death near the end that made me wonder if these people could actually suffer, but nope. A lot of drama is lost when characters are essentially gods.