Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mark of the Fool: A Progression Fantasy | 2022 | J.M. Clarke | N/A |
| 2 | Mark of the Fool | 2022 | J.M. Clarke | Buy |
| 3 | Mark of the Fool 2 | 2023 | J.M. Clarke | Buy |
| 4 | Mark of the Fool 3 | 2023 | J.M. Clarke | Buy |
| 5 | Mark of the Fool 4 | 2023 | J.M. Clarke | Buy |
| 6 | Mark of the Fool 5 | 2023 | J.M. Clarke | Buy |
| 7 | Mark of the Fool 6 | 2024 | J.M. Clarke | Buy |
| 8 | Mark of the Fool 7 | 2024 | J.M. Clarke | Buy |
| 9 | Mark of the Fool 8 | 2024 | J.M. Clarke | Buy |
| 10 | Mark of the Fool 10 | 2025 | J.M. Clarke | Buy |
| 11 | Mark of the Fool 9 | 2025 | J.M. Clarke | Buy |
Mark of the Fool started on Royal Road, where it reached nearly ten million views before J.M. Clarke revised it for the Kindle and Audible market. The premise is efficient: Alex Roth has been marked as “The Fool” by divine prophecy, a role that prevents him from learning magic or fighting effectively. Instead of accepting his fate as servant to the other four Heroes of prophecy, he runs — heading to the University of Generasi, the world’s greatest wizardry school, to research the enemy his kingdom is supposed to face.
The tension throughout the series is in watching Alex work around his mark’s restrictions rather than through them. Clarke builds a detailed world with a magic system that rewards close attention, and the story has a strong academic fantasy quality — lecture halls, competitive scholarship, and the slow accumulation of knowledge as a form of power. The series finished at ten books and is one of the clearer success stories of the web-serial-to-traditional-publishing pipeline.