By Kai Hsu
Genres: Fantasy, Time Travel, Progression, Magic, Mystery
Age Range: 14 - 20
Summary: A teenage mage of humble birth and slightly above-average skill, Zorian is attending his third year of education at Cyoria's magical academy. A driven and quiet young man, he is consumed by a desire to ensure his own future and free himself of the influence of his family, whom he resents for favoring his brothers over him. Consequently, Zorian has no time for pointless distractions, much less other people's problems.
As it happens, though, time is something he is about to get plenty of.
On the eve of Cyoria's annual summer festival, Zorian is murdered, then abruptly brought back to the beginning of the month, just before he was about to take the train to school. Finding himself trapped in a time loop with no clear end or exit, he will have to look both within and without to unravel the mystery set before him. He does have to unravel it, too, because the loop clearly wasn’t made for his sake, and in a world of magic even a time traveler isn't safe from those who wish him ill.
The time-loop novel to end all time-loop novels. I also decided to put the age range much higher than I intended to, so take that as what you will. This web serial focuses on time-loops, which is a type of story that you don’t see everyday, and for good reason. Time-loop stories generally have one weakness - they get boring because the story repeats itself over and over. But not this one. The story doesn’t feel boring and repetitive at all, which surprised me when I was reading this web serial. Even side character developments, which almost never happens in a time-loop story, happens in this web serial. Each and every character has a complex and intricate backstory, which doesn’t seem to just pop out of nowhere. Instead, it always fits and feels as if it had always been there, provided hints which pointed at the overall structure of the story. After I finished the story, I questioned to myself if the author wrote every character, backstory, and plot before they actually wrote the story, since everything fit together so well. Even the plot has got to be the best one I’ve ever read. Be warned though: this is an incredibly long read, with a total word count of 784,000, and was split apart into 5 separate books. If you do decide to read Mother of Learning though, it is so worth it. Mother of Learning has by far the best magic system I’ve seen in any magic novel. I also tagged on the Progression genre because it focuses heavily on power-building, although that's just because the narrator is stuck in a time-loop. This web serial is great for those who enjoy magic and long reads.
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