Breinthewild

This book is… interesting to say the least.

Which I suppose is a way of saying it was my least favorite story of the four Sanderson secret novels. But I still enjoyed it immensely. This was, in large part, thanks to the artwork. But also the artwork was kind of what made me dislike the story?

The premise of Frugal Wizard is basically Arthur C. Clarke’s third law: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It follows a man from our (real world) future who wakes up in (kind of) medieval England. The advanced technology in his body gives him “wizard” status amid the locals but unfortunately, he’s being pursued by dangerous people from his own time period. Oh, and he also has no clue who he is at the start of the book and has to piece his past life together over the course of the story.

It’s a strong setup and the start of the book captured my interest the most. Trying to figure out where we were and why kept me turning the pages. I also enjoyed the side characters and quickly became more invested in their story than the protagonist’s!

Helping all of this along was some truly delightful artwork by artist Steve Argyle. The FAQs, double-page spreads, and margin doodles throughout the book add much-needed flavor and energy to an otherwise middling story. However, once we start getting some answers to those page-turning questions at the beginning, the story starts to flatten out, at which point the fantastic art moves from complementing the story to just… being way better and more interesting.

Simply placing a book in a ‘potential zany setting’ isn’t enough. In this regard, the art actually works against the book. The story is interrupted at times by insanely cool artistic spreads that explain how the worldbuilding works as well as the concept of traveling to other dimensions (turns out we’re not in our medieval England after all). The problem is, all the other dimensions that can’t happen because of in-universe reasons sound way cooler and more interesting than the one in which we’re currently trapped. Out of all the possibilities, we landed in a dimension which contains: one bland protagonist man, some possibly interesting sprite/rune-based magic, and a very cool and badass woman who is unfortunately dragged down by the plot’s need to have her fall in love with bland protagonist man.

With the setting, I was kind of hoping to see something I’d never seen before. A wild adventure in the vein of Everything Everywhere, All at Once. The last thing I expected was for it to just be okay. This is one of the (many) reasons why I enjoyed the movie Everything Everywhere, All at Once far more than its Marvel counterpart Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. (And yes, these are two wildly different movies in wildly different genres but I think they’re comparable in this specific regard.) Both promise a wacky multiverse experience but only Everything actually leans into the strangeness, the silliness, the shenanigans. In my opinion, the artwork, the jacket copy, even the title of Frugal Wizard promises zany adventures. But most of the book ends up being a pretty generic medieval fantasy with modern sci-fi elements. Which is interesting but not what I was promised.

The art is everything the prose should be: funny and silly and full of unexpected twists with a narrative that you think is going one direction before cleverly flipping back on itself. It reminded me strongly of The Far Side comics by Gary Larson I used to read growing up, which have a deep impact on my current sense of humor. Absurdity is funny! But you do have to lean into it wholeheartedly. You can’t do half absurd/half serious. The end result is just… meh.

I have to mention this as well: the attempts at humor in Frugal Wizard just didn’t work for me. I get that humor is hard to write. What one person finds hilarious another may find undeniably crass. But the asides from the protagonist rating his adventures felt more abrasive than funny and because the story is in first person POV, the interruptions felt constant and unavoidable. (Zero out of five stars.)

Towards the end, I was no longer reading to find out if bland protagonist man, sorry, Johnny (I literally had to go back through the book to find his name because I’d forgotten it) accomplished something. I was here for the side character of Sefawynn, finding out more about the mysterious magic that kept popping up, and the art. That was all. The ending had some cool moments. And also some moments I rolled my eyes at. But overall it was a good time.

My rating for the story on this one is low. But the artwork is that good that I still recommend it. It’s a fun, breezy experience. Not one with lasting impact, but a story that goes down easy and is a pretty good time.

The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England: 6/10 stars