The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England

Novel by Brandon Sanderson

©2023 Tor

Review by Philip Kendall

The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England is the second book in Brandon Sanderson’s four Secret Projects, written using time the author would normally have been on book tours during the pandemic and released throughout 2023. Although the Secret Projects differ in setting and plot, they share a common theme: people are valuable, regardless of who they are or what they can do.

Unfortunately, the titular handbook in this Secret Project gets struck by lightning within the first few pages.

Since the nameless protagonist has near-amnesia, the event is somewhat disastrous. Even worse, he seems to have landed in medieval England, with no idea who he is or why he traveled there. Though nanobots make his arms impervious to swords and give him the ability to eat just about anything, someone has turned off the protections to his torso and he does not have the password. To top it off, an old acquaintance from the future has arrived and seems to be trying to take over the world.

Almost immediately after his fiery arrival in medieval England, the protagonist is captured and hung upside down by Sefawynn, a young skop. Skops are servants of the goddess Logna, hybrids of bards and sorceresses. Their boasting in rhyme can supposedly neutralize supernatural forces, even forcing them to provide useful labor. Sefawynn thinks the protagonist is an elf but soon becomes convinced he’s just a grifter pretending to be an elf. She offers to help with the con. The protagonist claims to be a wizard, but that is something the people of this era have no context for, and Sefawynn does not believe him.

One of the best parts of this book is Sanderson’s respect for the natives of this medieval world. Too often, an author uses future knowledge to justify making time-travelers smarter, wiser, and generally more effective than anyone they encounter. In Frugal Wizard, the locals are portrayed as highly intelligent and competent. On multiple occasions, they outfox or overwhelm their better-equipped opponents—starting from the very beginning, when Sefawynn captures the protagonist. The biggest threat at the conclusion of the book turns out to be not the enemies from the future but a massive Viking invasion.

This quote is probably the most impactful part of the book:

These people were used to bullies. They already knew what it was like to be afraid of a foreign invader. They weren’t impressed by the ability to kill. Cowed by it, yes. But impressed? No. They were impressed by the ability to live

The “England” this story takes place in is a dark, brutal place. Time travelers with futuristic weapons are just one more enemy, hardly notable to people already hard-pressed on every side. It is the gift of life, although delivered through futuristic medical technology, that awes them.

At another time, when the protagonist explains the magnitude of a modern metropolis, Sefawynn’s reaction is that this society must be incredibly peaceful for so many people to be able to live in proximity to one another. In a world where there is so much death, Sanderson takes the opportunity to point out that life is more important.

Perhaps my biggest criticism would be that Sanderson has written this type of protagonist before. The protagonist’s arc involves moving from crippling shame to the realization that he is someone significant who can make a contribution to the world. It’s inspiring—or would be if I had not seen it in four protagonists before this one. Sanderson’s belief in the intrinsic value of every human being is clearly important to him, and he expresses it in numerous ways throughout his books, including this one. However, using the same character arc in fundamentally the same way feels jaded.

In the small things, this book really shines. The protagonist’s slow piecing together of his memory was surprisingly captivating, partly because he keeps making the wrong assumption about who he really is until circumstances force him to reassess. Multiple side characters add spice to the story—such as Yazad, the perky Zoroastrian missionary who cheerfully tries to convert everyone he meets. Yazad is a microcosm of the story itself: although the world is dark and things seem hopeless, Sanderson does not wallow in it as some authors would. Instead, he points us to the light.