Review: The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England

The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As the author himself notes in an afterword, this isn't a typical Brandon Sanderson book. It's more science fiction than fantasy (though it has strong fantasy elements), the worldbuilding is often handwavy, and if you dropped the print version on a small dog the dog's chances of survival would be decent. It was written originally just for his wife's amusement, but she (fortunately) convinced him to share it with the world. I believe it was part of a highly successful Kickstarter.

It does have a couple of Sanderson hallmarks, though. It's funny, for one thing. Not all his books are funny, but when they are, they're funny without trying too hard. The characters are also not just their role in the plot plus their archetype; they have backstories and goals that provide them with believable motivations, and they have complexity to them.

This is especially the case for the main character, who starts out with amnesia, but soon remembers that his name is John West. A character starting with amnesia can be an awful cliché in the hands of a bad writer, but of course Sanderson is not one of those; it can also be a powerful premise in stories like The Bourne Identity , which Sanderson cites as an inspiration, or Nine Princes in Amber , which I was surprised that he did not cite.

In particular, starting your character with amnesia gives the opportunity for a particular kind of character arc, which is the one in this book. We tend to believe we're better than we are, and tell ourselves stories to this effect, though we can also tell ourselves that we're less than we are if enough people have told us that story that we've come to believe it. John exhibits both of those effects, and ends up becoming a better person than anyone, including him, expects, partly because he had the process of self-rediscovery from his amnesia.

The world is important in a Sanderson book; it's not just taken off the rack, it's always tailored. In this case, the in-universe documents interspersed between the chapters (another Sanderson trademark), which come from the handbook of the title, introduce us to a dodgy corporation that is exploiting a technological method of travel from our world in the late 21st century to what are effectively alternate worlds. Some of these worlds, including the one that this book takes place in, are the equivalent of an earlier stage in our world's history (the reason for this is handwaved), and of those, some of them - again including this one - contain a version of the British Isles in which people speak recognisable modern English, despite being, in this case, from the Anglo-Saxon period. This is not just handwaved but lampshaded as implausible. Non-diegetically, it means that, apart from specialist cultural vocabulary, the protagonist has minimal issues with communication, and allows the story to proceed at pace.

And proceed at pace it does. There are Viking raiders, gangsters from our Earth, fights, chases, rescues, True Love (or something like it), mysterious help from a supernatural source, and a genial Zoroastrian missionary. The protagonist and the locals he quickly comes to care about are always underdogs, which makes it all the more satisfying when they succeed against the odds.

It's not the best Sanderson ever, but there's plenty of space between "not the best Sanderson ever" and "bad," and this is an enjoyable, solidly written light read.

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