Mother of Learning

[hYGP]

Can I just note how hilarious the previous discussion is on this thread, now that we're 2 years in with simulacrum-golems with anti-tank crystal guns, airships, and, *gasp* beating Quatach-Ichl once from a month-long prepared ambush!

(sidenote: I really love how utterly busted Quatach-Ichl is; the story has never treated him like a trivial threat, always someone you need three or four archmages to keep up with)

Nochka is the new girl in town and hasn't made any friends at school, but starts hanging out with a first-generation mage-child named Kirelle, who helps her come to terms with being a Cat-Shifter. They have a couple of low-grade adventures (like getting lost in town, or defending Kana from bigots, or going bike-racing), before the main plot behind the story-arcs kicks off: together they start learning magic from Zorian, who they begin to suspect is secretly some kind of horrible dark wizard, on account of all the weird, disturbing trivia he knows about how Shifting works, magically. ("Technically it's as much soul magic as blood magic, considering the ritual foundation of how one would become a Shifter if that is something one wished to do, which of course I don't.") And he has a lot of really suspicious friends, including the family of Enthusiastic-Seeker-of-Novelty, who joins their girl's clique as a result of her story arc.

Click to shrink...

This sounds like a fun thing to write, but waiting that long would kill the thread; I'll work on it on the side.

 

[hYGP]

All of you probably know this already, but the final chapters of Mother of Learning are out!

This includes the final battle, the good guy winning, the bad guy winning, and the best sister losing her precious golem doll.

All that's left, in theory, is the epilogue - which basically means the story is done.

 

[Speedbump]

This is a blast from the past. It's interesting to see my previous speculation (both here and elsewhere) now that things are actually finished.

I'm very pleased by the final battle and subsequent chapters, but I wish the epilogue was a little more extensive. There weren't many massive twists, but I still found it generally satisfying after ~5 years of reading.(I didn't find it until it was some of the way in and I've followed it on and off as time has gone on)

Domagoj is understandably taking his time to consider what to do next, but personally I'd really like to see MoL get a proper editting pass and go from webserial to novel so to speak. There are some rough edges that could sorted in the beginning, a few chapters that were forced due to serialization that could be improved and distinctive voices for secondary characters could be made more consistent. Even without that I've had more enjoyment from this than I have from published books I've bought, so if he decides he'd rather move on to another writing project I certainly won't complain.