The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook to Surviving Medieval England

My Review:

@thearcaneaxiom, I know you wanted to know my thoughts on this book.

Please note that I was listening to this instead of reading it. Feel free to correct me on any butchered spelling/quotes.

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Year: 2023

Genres: Fantasy, Sci-fi, Action

Intro:

Waking up in the medieval field. a man discovers he has no memory of who he is except for the fact that he does not like to swim. He is very confused. Why does he appear to be in medieval England? Why is he wearing a tunic with jeans? Why is the ground around him burnt? Why is he so good at sneaking around? Why is he always trying to reach for… a gun?

His only clue to who he is, where he is, and whatever it is he is doing is The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook to Surviving Medieval England. However, he has a problem. His book has exploded and he can only find some of the pages left. For the pages he does have, he cannot read everything on them, due to burnt edges.

This story follows this man as he journeys in this strange place, trying to rediscover who he is. Perhaps his amnesia will even help him learn something new about himself.

Content Concerns:

This book had a few content concerns I was not expecting that took away from the story.

Firstly, it felt violent. I have read Mistborn, and it was not as bad as that, but there were still some violent things you might want to be aware of. In this world, some people have little robots inside of them that can heal them. This means these people can take more damage than usual. We are told of a fighting club where people are literally cut to pieces. However, their ‘nanites’ ensure that they are back to normal soon. A man’s head is vaporized. One of our heroes is responsible for this.

The language was also a problem here. ‘D—‘ is used frequently and ‘hell’ is also misused. Though rare, there were some words I believe are considered worse than these.

There are a couple of gods in here, but we are told that they are not the true God. There are some crude jokes.

– Spoiler Warning –

We learn that our protagonist was once dating a girl named Jen. However, only two weeks after they began dating, Jen started cheating on our hero by secretly dating his best friend Ryan instead. She continued to date both our hero and Ryan until she eventually faked her death to get out of her relationship with the protagonist.

What I liked:

In almost every Brandand Sanderson book I have read, the protagonist is curious about his or her world and likes to push the magic system to its limits to discover a new trick. While this is a nice way to do world-building and expand on what has already been established, it gets a little repetitive. The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook to Surviving Medieval England does its worldbuilding a little differently. In between some chapters, there will be FAQs or other sections from the actual The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook to Surviving Medieval England that explain a lot of how dimension travelling works, why other dimensions are different than ours, and what you can do if you purchase your own dimension. – Spoiler Warning – The protagonist does not learn all of this, and at the end of the story, he still does not quite understand how the magic system in the dimension he has travelled to works. This was kind of refreshing from other Sanderson books.

The protagonist has a habit of rating everything out of five stars. This was a fun quirk to him and some of his comparisons are funny. – Spoiler Warning –  One of his skills is drawing, but in the dimension he goes to, the people have no idea how to draw. He uses his drawing talents to scare off a group of raiders.

Another thing that was kind of funny was the accents that some characters spoke with. For example, they say ‘aelv’ instead of ‘elf’ (if I remember correctly) and ‘Waelish’ instead of ‘Welsh’. This added some character to this society.

What I did not like:

This book was not what I was expecting. I was expecting a story about a silly alternative world with talking bananas and things like that. (Although, to be honest, I am glad the talking bananas were only in the FAQ). This book was a lot more serious than it was made out to be. Instead of the aforementioned talking bananas, there were instead underground fight clubs, and mob bosses trying to get rich off of the black market.

We learn the protagonist is very good at lying. He does lie to protect others, and I know some will believe that is all right (actually, this is one of my favourite topics to discuss), but he also lies and manipulates to his benefit as well.

Some of the content concerns I found to be too much, and they took away from this story.

Favorite line(s):

“Try being me,” I said. “Zero Stars. I’ve had diet coke with sugar dumped in it that was better.”

“What is zero?” Sefawynn asked.

“Seriously? That is the part of my statement you didn’t understand?”

My Rating:

The protagonist of The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook to Surviving Medieval England quite often rates things out of five stars, so it feels fitting to do the same.

Book rating: Two Stars ⭐. Vilont and some Content concerns that were a bit too much. Not as entertaining as was the title, cover, and artwork made it out to be. I would recommend other Brandon Sanderson Books over this, like Tress and the Emerald Sea.

What do you think of this book? How many stars would you give it? What are some of your favourite lines from it?

@theducktator

First, your reviews are excellent. I’m impressed with your thoroughness.

Thank you! This was a lot longer than I intended it to be. However, I did want to give something that was not 90% content concerns like my review on Tress, so it became long.

I actually wrote an essay on this topic last year. [whether or not it is okay to tell a lie to protect others]🙂

Out of curiosity, which side did you take?