J.R. Mathews Books In Order

Publication Order of Jake's Magical Market Books

Publication Order of Portal to Nova Roma Books

J.R. Mathews
J. R. Mathews is a lawyer during the day, and he is a consumer of books by night. He loves the LitRPG/gamelit/progression genres and is excited just to have any of his books get published as an author.

L. E. Modesitt Jr. really made him appreciate slice of life type stories that had a magical element to them. Even during his teen years, his writing made a character building a boat or crafting his home from the ground up incredibly compelling to him somehow.

This has led to a lifetime of him enjoying the quieter scenes in books when the character is not battling tooth and nail in order to save the world, however they use their skills or magic to do something a bit ordinary in an extraordinary way.

His debut novel, called “Jake’s Magical Market”, was released in the year 2021, which is a LitRPG that is aimed at teen and young adult audiences. Mathews published it himself, and the audio book is narrated by Travis Baldree.

With this book, he actually combined two books together in order to release a book that had a solid page count, since he loves larger books that really allow him to get immersed into a world for a good long while. And he wanted to provide his readers with that same experience. Plus he did not want to just publish part one on its own and leave things on such an ending because it felt like he was leaving it on too much of a cliffhanger.

This way, his readers also do not have to wait a few months for the next one to come out. It might cost him some money, doing things this way, but he does not really like it when authors do that to him so he flat out refused to do so for his own first book.

He did not have any beta readers to provide him with any feedback, he just wrote it in private, with just his wife knowing that he was even writing a novel in the first place, then he had it illustrated and edited, and then released it.

For “Jake’s Magical Market”, he didn’t really even know if anybody would even want to read the book so he just tried to work on it by himself and attempted to release something that he felt he could be proud of and would want to check out and read himself and just hoped that other people would feel the same way. Now that he knows people seem to be digging his writing, he hopes he can make it even better in the future for readers to enjoy.

While waiting for “Jake’s Magical Market” to be published, he wrote a series called “Portal to Nova Roma”, which is more straight LitRPG than the “Jake’s” books are. Jake’s is kind of more LitRPG adjacent

For these follow up books, he had beta readers check them out, in order to provide some feedback, which has only helped him improve his writing that much more. While editing the book, he had a notepad filled with their thoughts and input close by so he is able to keep in mind how they feel.

“Jake’s Magical Market” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2021. Meddling gods, an apocalypse that nobody could have predicted, and a magical card system.

Jake is just working at the neighborhood market that is located right underneath his apartment when the world ends. He expected a nuclear war to break out, or a computer virus. Even climate change burning everybody to a crisp to bring about civilization’s downfall. However arbitrary and cruel gods that come from some other world? Who would have guessed anything like that happening?

And when these cruel gods shuffled Earth just like it was a deck of cards, nothing was in the same spot any longer. Magical items, monsters, and dungeons were scattered all over the world. There is this haunted forest, which is located behind the shop, now, as well as a series of mountains stretching out on the opposite end of town.

And all of a sudden, everybody has got access to a strange, new magical card system which gives them magical powers. And you don’t have to shout out what you’re going to do with them, they’re just a part of who your character is in the game. There’s even all kinds of different races showing up, including elves, a lone Minotaur that loves to travel around, and orcs. And they are tourists, conquerors, and adventurers or some combination of these.

Jake, who just wastes his day just slacking off in the cooler, like he typically did, found himself alone in a totally new and very dangerous world. Can he learn how to survive? Will he collect enough cards and create a deck that is good enough to battle back against the monsters that have taken over his former home? And why are these odd people which look quite a lot like elves knocking on the door of the market that he is trying to hide out in and asking to buy a few of his goods?

Readers found this to be a well written novel with some good characters and a slow build up that snowballs into something huge. The town building is excellent as well, and there is a unique magic system. This is an excellent progression fantasy which evolves in some interesting ways, without hardly any of the typical tropes which makes this a fantastic read.

Readers never expected this to be a deep character driven story that truly grips you until the end. Fans of the novel finished the book in a single sitting, loving every single moment of it, and were excited about what would happen next.

Fans of the genre love the way that cards being used in the novel, since it is not all that common in these sorts of novels and it means that the stats are contained in the cards. And this removes all the endless stat tables, and that makes all of the narration that much easier to get through.