Amber Magic

B.V Larson â somewhat well known for his often weird multi-book spanning science fiction. I'm actually a big fan of B.V Larson's science fiction work, having read his 13 book Star Force series, his five book Undying Mercenaries and now his Amber Magic series. Larson is actually one of the most successful indie authors on Amazon -- he's sold hundreds of thousands of ebooks, has at least 25 books on the Amazon market place, and regularly gets hundreds of reviews on each of his books.He's pretty much the poster boy for self publishing success.As for quality, his early works are pulpy and the writing wildly uneven. But somewhere along the couple dozen books he's written, Larson finds his voice and his writing talent vastly improves. And now, with his new books, Larson consistently demonstrates his writing craft through thoroughly his entertaining and inventive (sometimes weird) stories.The same goes for his Fantasy series, Haven.Amber Magic (and the entire 7 book series itself) feels a bit like Wheel of Time in plot, in character, and even the magic system. Notas good, not as developed, not as vast and deeply constructed, and a whole lot more pulpy, but it's still somewhat in the same direction that WOT goes.Larson's books are always pulpy with a male hero who's a male version of Mary Sue: the impossibly talented hero who's good at pretty much everything without effort while also maintaining a consistent harem of beautiful women.If Larson has a weak point, it's in his writing of female characters who are never, ever well-developed and merely exist for the male hero to bed. This lack of proper female characters has been a trend in Larson's work from the very beginning (and I've probably read 20 or so of his books by now); at this point, I don't expect any improvement there. Yet, I'm still reading them!Yes, I'm sure Larson is not popular with the feminists, but for those who want entering pulpy reads,  the man has cornered this market space pretty well.So if you are looking for an epic fantasy that apes some of the classics, one that borrowed heavily from those epic fantasy tropes we are quite familiar with now, this series delivers.What you don't get is a dark, gritty morally ambiguous fantasy like Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire -- but for many of you, that may not be a bad thing.Overall, an entertainingly, if shallow, read. Larson does know how to hit all the right pulpy buttons, making his books a bit of a guilty pleasure. You'll never read anything worthy of a Hugo or Nebula, yet the man probably makes more money than most of the traditionally published authors out there. And if you read his books -- any of them -- you'll see that first and foremost, Larson is a storyteller.And the first book (and many of the sequel books) costs a mere .99c, so there's that too.