Off to Be the Wizard

Took a little bit for the story to get moving but it was a fun read overall.

This book was really stupid. I kept reading it because I could not not read a book which has a Commodore 64 in it and lots of other neat stuff. While that did make up for many things, it didn't nearly make up enough. The book had a very terrible plot line, the “bad guy” was far too obvious and uninspired. There was little character development to speak of, in fact, most characters were rather shallow. If you want to read it, count on reading almost all of the book before there's any revelation as to what the main plot is. Sadly. Some parts were funny, others silly, and some downright stupid. So much for trusting all the good reviews.

Executive Summary: A really funny sci-fantasy story that will largely depend on your enjoyment of the humor.Audio book: Everyone seems to love the Iron Druid books. I just didn't. The one thing I did really love was Luke Daniels narration of those books however.I'll admit that probably more than half of the reason I chose to review this book for SFFAudio was because Luke Daniels was the reader. He did not disappoint. Another excellent performance.Full ReviewThis book started really slow, despite a cool concept. A computer geek discovers a file that somehow lets him manipulate not only the world and everything in it, but time itself. So of course he decides to go back to medieval times and become a wizard. As a computer geek who (not so) secretly would love to be a wizard I was intrigued.Unfortunately the main character, Martin isn't very likable at the start. Despite being good with computers, he doesn't seem very smart. For me the story finally started to get good when he meets Phillip. I will say Martin did grow on me as the book went on. I don't plan to say anything else about the plot because I don't want to ruin the jokes.I think your enjoyment of the book will largely depend on if you find the humor funny and your willingness to not only suspend your disbelief but throw it right out the window. Things get silly. Really silly.There is a lot of computer geek humor as well as some pop culture humor from the 80s and 90s that reminded me a bit of [b:Ready Player One 9969571 Ready Player One Ernest Cline https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1406383612s/9969571.jpg 14863741], a book I absolutely love. I think fans of that book, may find similar things to like here. Scott Meyer does for fantasy geeks what [a:Ernest Cline 31712 Ernest Cline https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1310753539p2/31712.jpg] did for gaming geeks.The only real complaint I have apart from the slow start is the general lack of women. That's a pretty common complaint in fantasy. However as this is a fantasy book based in current time and involves using computers to manipulate the world to pretend to be a wizard this seems like a big flaw for me.Mr. Meyer has a plausible reason to explain away his lack of female characters, but he could have just as easily had a plausible reason for their inclusion instead.Overall though, I really enjoyed listening to this book and I'll be on the lookout for his next book as well as planning to check out his webcomic in the near future.

This had so much potential. Unfortunately, after laying out an extremely interesting and original premise, it essentially turned into another book. And a mediocre one, at that. Not much in the way of stakes in the central conflict, and the resolution came without much of a bang. The final chapter felt like a setup for a sequel, but not one that promised anything new.

Spoiler: If you could go anywhere in the world, at any point in history, forever, why would you choose to spend eternity in one place and time? Or, more to the point, to tell a middling fantasy story for 75% of what begins as a funny and interesting science fiction piece?