A Celtic Boast that gets 5/5 Stars
5 stars
Brandon Sanderson is one of my favourite authors, so I didn't even bother reading the back of the book before starting this novel. There I was, on the first page, stunned that I was reading an amnesia story. Red flags were going off; this is one of my most hated tropes. Several hours later, I'm here expressing my disbelief that I actually enjoyed an amnesia story. Apparently this is considered the 'White Room' story style: where the narrator has to figure out who they are along with the reader. Keeping the reader in the dark is the critical difference, and what a difference it is!
In order to avoid spoilers, I'll simply expresss how well done the amnesia story element was. It drove character growth in a meaningful capacity while also avoiding irritating resolution mechanisms. All the downsides of the trope were avoided, and the fragments of the titular …
Brandon Sanderson is one of my favourite authors, so I didn't even bother reading the back of the book before starting this novel. There I was, on the first page, stunned that I was reading an amnesia story. Red flags were going off; this is one of my most hated tropes. Several hours later, I'm here expressing my disbelief that I actually enjoyed an amnesia story. Apparently this is considered the 'White Room' story style: where the narrator has to figure out who they are along with the reader. Keeping the reader in the dark is the critical difference, and what a difference it is!
In order to avoid spoilers, I'll simply expresss how well done the amnesia story element was. It drove character growth in a meaningful capacity while also avoiding irritating resolution mechanisms. All the downsides of the trope were avoided, and the fragments of the titular Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England guidebook was a clever way to introduce worldbuilding to both narrator and reader. The first-person POV was critical in pulling this off. I liked the main character's personality, as a blend of sarcasm and self-deprecation that was both funny and gave us an underdog we could root for.
Perhaps it was the title of the novel that made me assume everything would be tongue-in-cheek, but the accuracy of the historical fiction in this novel surprised me. It's lucky that I had dived into realistic Arthurian legends recently! The Celtic and Anglo-Saxon culture is really well-represented, and I further appreciate the main character calling out that just because he's from the future, doesn't mean the people of the past are dumber. I loved the representation as culture shock; something that's difficult to write because it requires us to recognition things we didn't realize existed.
The story skips a lot of Sanderson traits though: there's no magic system, it's not set in the Cosmere, and it's not even building up a trilogy! Despite all that, this is a tremendously enjoyable one-shot. It's imaginative, unique, realistic yet funny, and defies easy categorization as I tag it as fantasy, science-fiction, and historical fiction all at once.
Highly Recommended.
