I've read a few cultivation fantasies, and they always turn out to be in the mode of "The hero must succeed in this power up or die " *succeeds* "Now he must succeed in THIS power up or die..."
Would Roger Zelazny's "Madwand" qualify? I don't want to spoil as it's set in the universe of "Changeling" but later. Suffice it to say, being educated in magic is quite dangerous.
Not for the same reason as in "Rivers of London", where approximately any human can learn some quite spectacular magic, but the force tends to be directed back into your own brain, so most of the training is not to die from the side effects.
Ah yes, the second book in a series that never continued. I'm not sure it counts as cultivation so much as "The hero getting screwed with under the guides of teaching him."
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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-05-15 09:18 am
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(The author cannot, for the life of him, distinguish between its and it's).
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(Anonymous) 2025-05-17 03:59 pm (UTC)(link)Not for the same reason as in "Rivers of London", where approximately any human can learn some quite spectacular magic, but the force tends to be directed back into your own brain, so most of the training is not to die from the side effects.
Robert Carnegie
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