Off to Be the Wizard

I absolutely loved this fun, quirky take on time travel. Very easy and light read

Quick and easy read with an interesting story. It never gets boring and has a good pace, but would have loved a little bit more depth and technical details. The humor and pop references are also nice.

very mediocre, although to Meyer's credit I read the whole thing.

Stopped reading before the last third. Superb concept and boring story. Not interesting to read.

Fun premise though it was frustrating at times. Felt like large plot holes were introduced in order to make it follow a typical story narrative. I will probably give the sequel a chance to see if it improves.

Characters make many seemingly crazy decisions, especially near the beginning -- your best idea for an escape button is.. medieval England? Before even checking to see if your phone will work from there? Why not like.. the roof of some building in the same city? Also seems ridiculous that the wizards would make their robe/hat/staff an actual requirement of casting all their magic.. sure, you can wear them if you want but it's just an unnecessary complication added to justify all the wizards in the story being dressed as wizards, and it gets predictably taken advantage of.As a side note, it seems hard to believe that a bunch of independent computer nerds would rely on one centralized shell without having any programs hosted on their own computers as backup in case the shell stopped working.

This is a lot of fun. hat if we are living in simulation and you learned how to manipulate the parameters that represent you?
Change the value of location and you are instantly somewhere else.
Change the value of hair color and you are a redhead.
What would you do?
Cleverly written and full of interesting ideas.
A little slow during the training montage but all in all, very enjoyable.

I absolutely loved this fun, quirky take on time travel. Very easy and light read

Hilarious! Fun! Really enjoyed this book! Absolutely loved it!

Lighthearted fun sci-fi-fantasy aimed at coders.

This was insubstantial but fun. I think it'll be entertaining if you go into it with the right expectations.

There aren't deep layers of plot - if you think you know where a point is going, you're right. Not much is twisty or surprising. Some of the characters are endearing, while others are rather thinly drawn, and it suffers from Smurfette Principle. But it's a silly romp with some fun action scenes and goofy gags.

Sometimes it seems like Meyer is trying to worldbuild very carefully and follow those rules, but other times it feels like a significant question gets glossed over. Chief among them is “you discovered the source code of the universe and your ambitions are basically limited to avoiding arrest and LARPing?” But I had to get over that. That's the setup - don't fight the hypothetical, just go along for the ride.

Hilarious fun! The pop culture references and sarcastic humor were a delight to read. Meyer's writing style reminds me of Christopher Moore. The illustrations included were a nice touch too.

Just an under par book. No major offenses, but everything (character, plot, setting) is way too weak to be worth reading.

Major plot holes (how can you use a cellphone in the medieval age?) did not bother me as much as the rest.

The protagonist is given the power of a god (wizard) but he is too stupid to make anything useful out of it. He attracts the attention of the FBI, because he makes money out of thin air into his own account, and escapes to medieval England to avoid arrest. Because if you can change reality, this is the best course of action, of course.

If this was just a premise for the adventures of a man from the future in the past, I can take it. But it is not. When he arrives at the past, he finds another time traveler with the same powers as him that is willing to teach him how to become more powerful. This is as interesting as my nephew telling me about his day at school.

And that is the book. Dumb protagonist and uninteresting plot.

Read 3:23/10:14 33%

A fun and light read. While I felt there were a few holes in the plot I didn't feel it detracted from the story. I think those who enjoyed Ready Player One (as I did) would enjoy this. While I found the main character a little annoying at first he did grow on me. Recommended.

Was a fun book, specially for geeks, like ...hmm.. me.

Really good fun, some really great ideas and some definite “laugh out loud” moments. Geeky, time-travel, wizards, what isn't there to love!

4 stars because I've spoilt myself with books like Ready Player One and Armada which are in similar-ish vein, but I enjoyed more.

One day, 23 year old Martin Banks finds a giant text file in which he's able to do things like change people's height, his current location and manipulate time. When he uses it a bit too much to increase the money in his bank account, the police are onto him and he sees no other way out than to escape to Medieval England where he pretends to be a wizard.

Everything about this book is relatively straightforward. The story isn't very complicated and the writing style is very simple and easy to get into. The narration by Luke Daniels elevated this book immensely. It was perfection. It brought some more humor that might not have been as good when reading on a page.

As a fun lighthearted read you don't require that much of, it's great. It is over 10 hours long when listening though, and that was just a little too long for me, because I think it could have been shortened down. There were a few times I started losing interest, and then other times in the book that I was super into it.
I'm not sure I'll be checking out the sequels, since I think this stands on its own and I have no dire need to get more out of these characters.

Fun concept and amusingly familiar “nerd” types of characters doing precisely what I would expect them to do in Medieval England. I just kept questioning how a network connection worked back then...

Really enjoyed this! It read almost like a point-and-click adventure game with the same amount of satire and humor. (Day of the Tentacle/Monkey Island) I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Light and satisfyingly geeky. Push on through the first quarter and resist your urge the throw the book at the wall at Martins character. He does settle in and learn. Given how short it is I will give the second one a go.

2024: Yup, I still thouroughly enjoyed listening to this book! I just posted this review on Amazon about the whole series: I have listened to the first 3 books at least 4 times and I'm pretty sure I listened to books 4 and 5 again before listening to book six. And you know what? I think it's about time I listen to them again! They are that fun! I mean, who among us nerds has not wished that we could alter certain things about our physical appearance or abilities by simply editing some code in a file or plugging into the matrix to download languages and martial arts skills (oh wait, that was The Matrix)...

2019: Why do I love this book so much? I don't know. But I do. This is at least my third time reading it.

There's a great temptation – and frequently a rush – when discussing an amusing/funny book in SF or Fantasy to compare it with, well – the name rhymes with Schmouglas Schmadams – this can be damning, because almost nothing can live up to it. So I'm going to resist even saying the name. If anything, I think you could say this was reminiscent of Schmon Schmalzi – only funnier.

Martin Banks is the rather unimpressive hero here – a college dropout, living in a poorly-furnished apartment, working in “a cubicle farm, . . . a fluorescent-lighted, beige-walled abattoir for the human spirit where he had to spend most of his time,” and doing some minor hacking on the weekends, just to amuse himself. He stumbles upon a way to manipulate reality, to change things just a little bit here and there around him. Being human, it takes very little time before he begins using that ability in a way to draw the attention of the Federal Authorities. Which is not all that comfortable, so he heads off to England in the Middle Ages where he figures he can do okay for himself, living as a wizard using these abilities.

That's when things start to get really entertaining (and I had no complaints up to this point). Anything more I say on this front is a horrible spoiler, so we'll just leave it with really entertaining.

This is a coming of age tale – and, as it's about a Millennial, it's a delayed-coming-of-age story. But Martin's not one of those protagonists that you have to see mature before you like him – you connect with him right away (or you're probably wasting your time reading on). He definitely doesn't mature in your typical way, which is part of the fun. I can't help comparing Martin to Wesley Chu's Roen Tan. But without the stakes that Roen had to deal with (and a nicer mentor).

Most of the characters we get to know are met after Martin's time jump – so don't worry if you find everyone in 2012 a little shallow and undeveloped. They are, but other people won't.

There are several things in the book that won't hold up to much scrutiny – like his ability to get a smartphone signal in Dover, England in 1150. Adapt the advice Joel and the ‘bots used to give us, “just repeat to yourself . . . you should really just relax.” It's worth it.

The book is just littered with wit – from the extended jokes, the funny visuals, or little asides like: “The fact that wristwatches weren't invented yet made it difficult to look impatient , but he managed.” On nearly every page, there's something to make you chuckle or laugh – or at least grin. I laughed enough that it was annoying to my family – not that I cared, mind you. But it's not just a yuk-fest, there's a well-written story here, in a great world with some characters you want to spend time with.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the trilogy and have promised myself that I won't have to wait too long for it. A great mix of SF, Fantasy, Magic, Computers, the Middle Ages and laughs. What are you waiting for?

What if God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days using Linux, C++, or chomski? Well, there would be a program that could be found to make a few alterations. What if you found that program, and made a few not quite illegal mistakes? Where would you hide? Medieval Arthurian England, of course. This is the story of a bunch of decent guys that have the power to make their geek and nerd dreams come true. Nothing could go wrong, could it?

Intelligent humor with just enough pop culture in the mix.

Fun, light read.

Read this and one or more of the next ones on Erica's Kindle.

Quick and entertaining. A simple and interesting premise. Pretty funny. Picked it up on a whim. Mostly listened to the audiobook, which was well-done. Bought the sequel immediately. I'd recommend it, for something light.