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A review by pagesplotsandpints
The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson
3.0
Read Completed 4/6/23 | This was just okay for me. I listened to the audiobook version and as always, Michael Kramer and Kate Reading did a great job (Kate just reads the excerpts from the book, by the way -- one POV and one character to follow here). Mostly, I just didn't connect with it at all. It's not Cosmere related, which is okay because I've enjoyed many non-Cosmere fantasy books like The Rithmatist and even other Sanderson books that have taken place on Earth/in the real world although fictionalized, like The Legion books and The Reckoners series. But this one was just fairly uninteresting to me, and I think that's because this book really lacked any backstory.
Sanderson is usually great at secondary characters, world-building, and all the details that make the book interesting. There were a lot of world-building details here but the characters all felt incredibly under-developed. Johnny wakes up in this new world not knowing who he is so we just don't even get much about him because even HE doesn't know. It was a little frustrating trying to get a grip on what this book was supposed to be about, what the motivation was to carry us through, and why I should care about the characters. He had plenty of charm like many Sanderson heroes do, but without context it was just a little too flat.
I guess I also really didn't care about the world either. The setting is another world -- literally, another dimension -- of Earth that was/was kind of like Medieval England and unless it's a high fantasy world, I'm just not really into it. There just wasn't enough to really pull me into the book to make the setting interesting, at least for my tastes!
Even though it's blatantly a non-Cosmere novel, I kept hoping it would tie in somehow. A peek at the Cosmere universe through another portal or dimension, that the runes were actually Aons... Hey, I tried.
It doesn't feel right giving this less than three stars but I did have trouble picking it back up. It just felt like it really lacked substance. I know Brandon Sanderson originally wrote these for fun for him & his wife and this kind of fit his signature style and didn't all at once. It reminded me more of his middle grade series with more surface level feels and silly jokes. Just not really my style/preference and not something I would have spent this kind of money on for a cool, special edition if it hadn't been in the Kickstarter bundle. This would have been a library read for me based on the topic, so I'm a little disappointed I didn't enjoy it more but I guess it will look pretty on my shelves!
Sanderson is usually great at secondary characters, world-building, and all the details that make the book interesting. There were a lot of world-building details here but the characters all felt incredibly under-developed. Johnny wakes up in this new world not knowing who he is so we just don't even get much about him because even HE doesn't know. It was a little frustrating trying to get a grip on what this book was supposed to be about, what the motivation was to carry us through, and why I should care about the characters. He had plenty of charm like many Sanderson heroes do, but without context it was just a little too flat.
I guess I also really didn't care about the world either. The setting is another world -- literally, another dimension -- of Earth that was/was kind of like Medieval England and unless it's a high fantasy world, I'm just not really into it. There just wasn't enough to really pull me into the book to make the setting interesting, at least for my tastes!
Even though it's blatantly a non-Cosmere novel, I kept hoping it would tie in somehow. A peek at the Cosmere universe through another portal or dimension, that the runes were actually Aons... Hey, I tried.
It doesn't feel right giving this less than three stars but I did have trouble picking it back up. It just felt like it really lacked substance. I know Brandon Sanderson originally wrote these for fun for him & his wife and this kind of fit his signature style and didn't all at once. It reminded me more of his middle grade series with more surface level feels and silly jokes. Just not really my style/preference and not something I would have spent this kind of money on for a cool, special edition if it hadn't been in the Kickstarter bundle. This would have been a library read for me based on the topic, so I'm a little disappointed I didn't enjoy it more but I guess it will look pretty on my shelves!