Frugal Wizard's Handbook
(#1 of probably many)
by Brandon Sanderson
subadult, fantasy
copyright 2023
read in August 2023
rated 6/10: read to pass the time
I often take the hero's age as a measure of the expected age of the target audience. In this book the hero is mid-twenties or older? yet the message(*) is aimed at late teens.
It's an enjoyable book. The author has devised time travel without needing to travel through time. How does it work? well... it is all explained. At great length.
Remember those great Heinlein novels? Where the plot is interrupted as a character spends several pages explaining the author's political views? This book uses a similar approach: there are pages of a "marketing brochure" where the "science" is explained.
I'm sure that novelists are told to show not explain. This book tosses that advice out the window. The "brochure" is amusing -- and satirical -- but lazy. Pure exposition. With no attempt to "show".
The book uses several of these lazy tools.
In an afterword the author is glad to have started his hero with amnesia. It allows the reader to learn along with the hero, he writes.
It is also an easy way to solve problems by suddenly providing the hero with a new and unexpected power. No need for an early hint of the power, just spring it on us when all else has failed. Okay, discovery of a new power is not over-used. Yet.
The book is subadult: all the locals are rather nice. Polite, clean and welcoming. Perhaps this is, as the author claims, a valid reflection of the historic era. It seems false.
Then there is the art: modern drawing techniques play an important part in the plot (though the importance is barely followed through). The author explains the "modern" use of shadow and perspective. Either he does not understand perspective or he is unable to explain it.
And then... the book lays on the (*)message: Try hard, do well, do not give up, do not run from the challenge. The tone of this message is aimed at uncertain teens.
Not to worry, the book is enjoyable.
Until it ends -- albeit satisfactorily -- with a clear excuse for a future book series. Clear excuse and very artificial. Another piece of a good author -- being lazy.
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