Edria – Imperialistic southern nation. Conquered Kelridge during the Six Years War and nearly conquered Valia as well.
Caelford – Technologically advanced nation on the western coast of the continent. Allied with Valia.
Dalenos – Theocracy; covers most of the northern side of the continent.
Kelridge – A territory that was a part of Dalenos prior to the Six Years War. Conquered by Edria and now known as East Edria.
Days of the Week:
Orsay
Kyrsday
Wainsday
Fersday
Vasday
Wyddsay
Acknlowedgmenets
The title of the first Arcane Ascension book, Sufficiently Advanced Magic, is a homage to Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
The title of this book, On the Shoulders of Titans, is a reference to the quote, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” This is most famously attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, though variations of the quote predate him.
In the context of this story, the quote is representing the generations of researchers building from the knowledge of the past, ultimately resulting in developments like artificial attunements.
Corin Cadence owes his existence to the “Cobalt Nightmares” role-playing game campaign by Bernard Hansel, Justin Green, Danielle Collins, and numerous other game masters and staff. While the Corin in this novel differs significantly from the character in that game world, playing “Corin Page” is what gave me the first hints of inspiration for this book.
Similarly, Sera Shard/Sera Cadence was inspired by her analogue in Cobalt Nightmares, played by Jess Richards.
Sir Tanath is a cameo for one of my readers, Charles DeGregorio. I hope my brief depiction honored his character.
As always, my beta readers were essential in improving the quality of this manuscript. My beta readers included Sean Anderson, Ari Barzilai, Brittany Chhutani, Steven Ericksen, Ira Ham, Brian Heins, Jean, John Findlay, C.W. Fox, Jacob Fullmer, Gereon Hinz, Domagoj Kurmaić, Josh Kutterer, Rachel Noel, Jess Richards, Bruce Rowe, Christine Rowe, Jay Taylor, and Chris Zamora.
Much of my inspiration for this work came from web serials such as Mother of Learning by nobody103, Worm by Wildbow, and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky.
Another layer of my inspiration came from JRPGs such as Final Fantasy, Tower of Druaga, Azure Dreams, Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals, Ys, and Bravely Default. In specific, the massive towers owe much of their existence to the earlier JRPGs on the list, and the idea of building a magic system around character classes was largely inspired by Bravely Default. While many earlier JRPGs had “job class” systems, Bravely Default worked character classes into their story — and that’s something I wanted to expand on further.
I’d like to thank the many readers over on my blog for their encouragements and suggestions, especially during the period of time I was debating many title options.
Finally, thanks to the community over on Reddit’s /r/fantasy, especially asuraemulator, Green0Photon, Jadeyard, and the other users that took the time to give me feedback on my earlier works.
Similar Works
I’m often asked for recommendations for books similar to Sufficiently Advanced Magic.
If you’re looking for another magical school story with a protagonist that does a lot of research into how magic works, I would recommend the web serial Mother of Learning.
If you’re looking for another book with a lot of anime-flavored combat scenes, I’d recommend the Cradle series by Will Wight.
If you’re looking for more books with strong RPG inspiration, there are a couple up-and-coming genre labels to look for.
“LitRPGs” tend to literally take place in a video game, or in a world that has overt RPG mechanics, such as character classes and levels. Some classic examples include the .Hack series and Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. If you’re looking for one of these, I’d recommend Ascend Online by Luke Chmilenko.
There are a number of places to find great LitRPG recommendations. For example, there’s a large LitRPG Facebook group that can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGGroup/. There is also a LitRPG subreddit, which can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/litrpg/.
“GameLit” is a slightly broader genre that includes game inspired fiction in general. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline would be a good example of this.
If you’re looking for an online community for more GameLit recommendations, you may want to look at GameLit Society group. There’s also a more general GameLit group. There’s also a GameLit subreddit, which can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/GameLit/.