Normally when reading a novel by Brandon Sanderson, I expect to have a pretty enjoyable time reading it. When he wrote three books during quarantine, I was fairly excited to read them. I absolutely love the other books he had written and Tress of the Emerald Sea which was the first of his Secret Project Books and I thought, despite how strange it was, it was really well done. But to my surprise, The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England was not what I had come to expect.
Character Development
4/10
I was genuinely surprised how unlikeable and uninteresting the majority of the characters were. There were maybe one or two characters that were somewhat endearing, but generally almost everyone came off as an uninteresting jerk. It’s not even a question of if they were likeable or not but the fact that they were just genuinely boring. The main character is an amnesiac by the name of John and the complete lack of mystery or intrigue regarding his amnesia was disappointing. The revelations came randomly and often felt lacking in any real emotional impact. There wasn’t anything really to latch on to that makes the main character endearing or interesting. He did grow and change as the story progressed but it didn’t necessarily come off as earned despite the actions normally necessitating that. It’s the way he approached his growth as a character that makes it feel unimportant.
What made things worse was the lack of interesting or endearing side characters. The dynamics between John and the other characters came off as stale and uninteresting despite clearly being meant to be impactful. A lot of the time, it mostly came off that they were just there to fulfill the duties of side characters rather than being fleshed out and developed characters with their own goals and character arcs. What also didn’t help was an antagonist who barely showed up in the story and didn’t have much of a character to them at all. They were there mostly as a generic antagonist for the heroes to rally against. It created a complete lack of tension between the characters. To be honest, all the characters were quite unlikeable and uninteresting save for one, but they were also quite generic. Only one of the side characters had some development and growth but it sort of just happened rather than being a strenuous and tense development over the book.
Plot
4/10
Contrary to Tress of the Emerald Sea where it felt like a lot had happened throughout the story, in this book it felt like not much had actually happened despite the two books not being too different in length. The pacing was so agonizingly slow and boring most of the time but when interesting events happen, it’s actually quite interesting and has potential to be quite intriguing. But those moments felt really few and far between which made for a rather dull story for the most part. It certainly didn’t help that John was the main driver of the story and didn’t quite feel like he was invested in the main plot until about halfway through the book. It often felt like he was just going with the flow of events occurring without having any strong reasoning or purpose for his decisions which led to a boring and uninteresting character driven story.
Worldbuilding
3/10
Honestly, probably the most surprising part about this book was how boring this fantasy setting was. Now to admit my own bias, I generally find medieval fantasy settings quite boring and generic as it’s often the norm and already used in so many fantasy stories. But it felt particularly egregious here as the worldbuilding was very shallow, especially compared to Sanderson’s other works. The depth to which the spores in Tress of the Emerald Seas was explored and discussed was so thoroughly explained and developed which made for a far more compelling fantasy world and to not see the same level of depth in The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook was quite disappointing. The explanation for John’s enhancements was a rather generic science fiction reason that wasn’t explored much and the general magic system in the land is rather vague and it’s not clear why things are happening.
Writing Style
6/10
Unsurprisingly, Sanderson’s writing style made this book far easier to read. Despite how slow the pacing of the story was and how uninteresting the characters are, the way they’re written at least made the story have a decent flow to it. The chapter length and paragraphs were easy to digest which made the book much easier to read even though the content of the story itself was not engaging. But one area that felt surprisingly lacking was the dialogue. The normally endearing dialogue that Sanderson’s characters are known for was strangely lacking here. The way characters spoke to each other was rather stiff and lacked emotion behind a lot of happened. It led to a lot of not very believable relationships between several characters.
Score
4.25/10
Raph's Cozy Musings 