The Wizard's Crown

Michael G. Manning

May 2022 · Art of the Adept Book 5 · Michael Manning

About this ebook

Will’s journey from naïve apprentice to a mature wizard is almost complete and his ever-growing mastery has reached unseen heights. But his power does not exist in a vacuum. His rising star threatens to eclipse the existing powers and a new balance must be found, one that either accepts his primacy or extinguishes his light.

After Will’s resounding successes in the war with Darrow the king plots to eliminate his young rival. Driven to desperation, Will is forced to negotiate for scraps between four brokers of power.

An ancient lich driven by vengeance.

The fae queen to whom all are just pawns in a deadly game.

A nervous lord of Hell, because Will may have killed his predecessor, twice.

A primal beast, feared above all.

With mortal enemies as his allies, Will must survive to face the king—and the deadly secret he plans to unleash. Ancient foes have risen and the final battle has begun. With the world hanging in the balance, king and wizard clash, but only one can wear the Wizard’s Crown.

Ratings and reviews

Did someone who hates the author write this book? All the goals, character development and world progression were tossed to the side to find the worst way to expand the storyline. All of the characters were body snatched and bore no resemblance to themselves in previous books. Tell me when a time machine is invented so I can tell myself to not waste the emotional investment.

Man emotions all over the place. Truly expected a bit of a differnt turn at the end but damn. Extremely glad Wills story isnt done. Also kinda peeved that he didnt use his sound talents the same as the last book. The lightning was epic and loved it but I definitely liked his frost abilities with sound. Seems like that couldve came in handy a number of times.

What HAPPENED to this book!? It feels like the first 1/4 of the manuscript was viciously killed with fire just to keep the page count down. If that was what happened, I don't think it worked. The earlier chapters feel like a mess that was set to fast-forward just to get to the actual content faster and I don't think that messiness ever fully faded from the rest of the book. It might have been better if this book was split into 2. Despite that the rest of the book felt much closer to the quality I've come to expect and enjoy from this series. And then came the ending! It was masterful how perfectly it tore my heart out and ate it. My goodness, I might need to spend a few hours watching Mr. Rodger's Neighborhood while curled up in a ball and crying to recover. It was NOT a happy ending. At best it was BITTERsweet. If anything anywhere near this happens again I don't think I can dare to risk my emotions on any more of Michael G. Manning's works.