BATTLE OF THE LINGUIST MAGES | Scotto Moore

PUBLICATION DATE: 11 JANUARY 2022

I… truly do not even know where to start with this.

Battle of the Linguist Mages was not at all what I had imagined it would be. In actual fact, I do not think it is at all possible to read this book and have it be what you imagined it would be. At no point did I know what was going to happen next, and at no point was I prepared for what I was experiencing.

I loved it.

Let me try and give you a synopsis (the key word here being try): Isobel Bailie is unemployed, recently single, and the top Sparkle Dungeon (a VR game) player in the world. She gets scouted by a marketing agency with SparkleCo (Sparkle Dungeon’s company) as their client to do usability testing for the next SD game, except not really – what they’re actually wanting is Isobel’s expertise in diva-casting (an in-game spellcasting method) to help with the development of power morphemes. Power morphemes are linguistic elements (?) which, when spoken with different tonal qualities (??) and in different combinations (???) have… well, power. Like, magic power. Oh yeah, and punctuation marks are aliens (but not like, written punctuation marks, more like punctuation marks as a concept as used in speech) who have been using humanity for centuries to escape genocide. And there’s gods and heralds, too. Anyway, Isobel has to team up with a group of misfits to save the universe.

You know, normal sci-fi stuff!

I just think this book is so cool, in terms of both storyline and execution. Conceptually, it's quite meaty and dense, which lets you really sink yourself into the story and hang on for the ride. My piddly little synopsis barely scratches the surface of the detail Moore goes into, which can at times make you feel as if the cogs of your brain are truly struggling through a pool of molasses, but by god, this book is fun. It is such a wild, unhinged ride through some very cool elements (like cults, godhood, linguistics, teleportation, transmutation, the logosphere, pocket dimensions, VR gaming, dubstep…) all combined into this very strange but very brilliant novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it, in all its weird, niche glory. Battle of the Linguist Mages was 100% up my alley, and I implore everyone to give it a go. I promise: it’s not like anything you’ve ever read before.

Many thanks to NetGalley and to Macmillan-Tor/Forge publishers for an ARC of this book.