OptionalBooks

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A man wakes up in the middle of a field without memory of how he got here or who he is. The ground around him seems charred from an explosion and he's holding a badly burned handbook for dimension travellers. Before he can make much progress in reconstructing his identity or past events, he's pulled into a fantasy adventure that pushes him to define his identity anew and to join the fight against colonialist forces.

The story is set in a somewhat accurate medieval England with fantasy elements like gods and magic thrown in. It also contains a couple sci-fi elements which are cleverly integrated.

Overall, sadly, this book is very unexceptional. The characters are different enough to build up a diverse cast, but too bland to remember fondly after reading. The plot is handled competently, but follows a quite predictable YA fantasy structure. The inner conflict of the main character is a bit bland and the insights he gains over the course of the narrative are a bit too simple and cliché for my liking. The ending ties everything together, but left me unsatisfied.

The prose writing is quite good, with sentences flowing really well together and many clever and humorous descriptions. But the humour also managed to overstay its welcome by repeating jokes too often. The only place where it consistently worked really well was in chapters from the in-universe actual handbook also called “The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England”. These were inserted between the narrative at various points and provided additional worldbuilding in the form of supposed marketing material. In these, Sanderson provides some excellent satire on advertising, terms of service legalese, and products for the rich.

A quick read with which you're not really going wrong, but it's also nothing great.

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