Read Time: 3 Minutes
Mage Tank sounded like an interesting combo, taking the normally squishy magic slinging class and combining them with the party tank so they can take a hit. After wrapping himself around a tree, Arlo dies (as one does) and wakes up in a new world with the chance to build a character in a game-like system. Only, instead of carefully planning out a balanced build, Arlo promptly dumps all his points into Fortitude and the leftover into Intelligence.
His traumatic exit to his previous life played a lot into the Fortitude choice, determined to not die quite as easy this time around.
He’s keen on being a spell caster though who are notoriously squishy, so with off-the-charts fortitude and some other special abilities, becoming a mage-tank seems ideal. No shield, no armour, no real plan – just a lot of hit points and a dream.
We jump right into the action with Arlo needing to learn on the job, as it were. His new dungeon delving party is waiting for him, and ignoring the fact he’s obviously a noob, they choose the highest setting. Good thing he can take a hit. Because he does. Repeatedly.
After surviving that and bonding with an interesting choice for a familiar, Arlo begins to learn about the new world he finds himself in. Typically, being a “delver” is restricted to the nobles, so Arlo appearing from nowhere raises some questions. There’s a bunch of stuff at play which we get hints at along the way; glimpses at the wider world, various factions, and a brewing conflict.
The focus is mostly on Arlo’s personal journey from tanky nobody to an even tankier spell-slinger. It keeps things moving with lot of opportunities to grind and get some more levels popping up frequently so never really getting bogged down. As the book goes on, things get a little more existential terror-ish with battles against entities from before the dawn of time.
Based on progression so far, he’s headed towards being overpowered, but at the same time there are a lot who are stronger than him so for now it’s not too bad. It also sounds like there might be some levelling off at some point due to the mechanics of his levelling, so might not come to pass, or at not as OP as it might seem at first.
Narration-wise, Daniel Wisniewski does a great job. He captures Arlo’s dry sarcasm and makes the more absurd lines land without overplaying them. There’s a consistent tone to the performance that fits the book well. For the most part, he’s not doing a dozen wildly different voices, much of the time the tone is more casual, but he cranks it up when needed. Production quality was excellent as well, with no background noises or obvious retakes.
Overall, Mage Tank is an entertaining listen. If you’re in the mood for something light but that has depth, irreverent at times but also has deeper currents moving things along, then this might be for you. It’s not trying to reinvent the genre, but it plays around with the tropes in a way that feels fresh and fun. I’ll definitely be grabbing the next one when it arrives! Mad respect anyone who commits that hard to a bad idea!