The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England

Secret Project 2 was definitely the book out of the 4 that I was least hyped for. Despite having an interesting premise, I didn't really know what it was the book was going to be trying to deliver on, even after reading the preview that Sanderson released last year.

It's been two days since I finished the book, and if I was to be completely honest, I still don't really know where it lands for me. On the one hand, it was a total page turner, but in the sense that I wanted to see where the story went out of curiosity, as opposed to out of love for the story being told. And despite the fact that it never actually got all that exciting to read, I was still disappointed to be finished with the book, as I wanted to spend more time with the few side characters that managed to hold my attention, and the world that I felt wasn't explored to the fullest of its potential.

So I don't fully understand my feelings on the book. I'm left feeling really conflicted about whether I enjoyed it or not, because on the one hand, I don't regret reading it, and had a pretty decent time with it, but wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The rest of this is gonna be a little rambly, since I'm gonna try and put my feelings to paper (sort of) to maybe get a better grip on them.

First things first, lets talk positives, because there's a good chunk to like here. The setting/concept is cool. I group them because it's impossible to divorce one from the other. It's top tier. It's a very cool idea that I've never seen done before, and scratches my itch of wanting read more Sci-fi that has cool concepts without getting really heady. It also manages to interweave fantasy in fun ways, which I can really appreciate. The historical accuracy of the setting seems fantastic, albeit with some creative liberties that make sense with the rules the books establishes.

Then there's the art that's done throughout the book. It's not the beautiful tapestries that we saw with Tress, but my god, do these look good. There's a solid variety of art pieces, one set tells a story, others are at the top of chapters of the in universe manual, some are just traditional art depicting a scene from the last few pages. Steve Argyle absolutely killed it in every regard. I'm hyped as hell to get my physical copy so that I can actually see them put to paper, because hoo boy are they great.

I'm personally not jazzed with the cover, as I think it's a bit mid, but all the interior art makes up for that by a mile (and who knows, the physical edition might sway me, I'll include an edit when I get it).

And lastly, some of the side characters are excellent. Mainly Ealstan and Sefawynn. There's some other pretty good ones, but I can't mention them because spoilers. Sefawynn is definitely my favourite character in the book. I like her strong personality and no nonsense attitude that she displays throughout. Her character arc was the only one that I was even remotely invested in, as I wanted to see how she'd overcome her confidence issues.

Other than that, I don't really vibe with anything else in the book to the point where I'd count it as something I liked. The story itself was kinda mediocre, since it just ends up becoming a fairly generic behind enemy lines cop thriller, except we don't follow the cop. We follow his friend, who sort of just bumbled into the whole thing.

Then there's most of the characters. They're either bland and forgettable, or downright shit. For instance, the main villain of the story is the most generic gang leader I've ever read. It's like he was ripped right out of a James Patterson novel, and put into an actually good authors work. Others are just a total drain, like Ryan (Fuck Ryan, all my homies hate Ryan), or just don't have enough screentime to make any meaningful impact on the experience.

But the worst offender, by a country mile, is Johnny, our (un)lovable protagonist. I hate Johnny, and I think he's a big reason behind why I didn't connect with the book as much as I'd have liked. Johnny's a whiny, needy little twat, who thankfully, actually has an arc of some description, but that arcs dire. I have never been less invested in a Sanderson character than I was with Johnny. I genuinely believe that he's one of, if not the worst, protagonist Sanderson has ever written. I hated him, and was glad to be out of his head by the end.

Then there's the pacing of the book. It never felt like it picked up, while also feeling like it went too quick. The book just sort of lackadaisically plodded along, like the story was actively bogging itself down attempting to prevent itself from getting to the point, and then when it finally did, it just speedran towards the most predictable ending that it could have possibly hit. We didn't even really get a satisfying conclusion to the main throughline, as the villain ended up just leaving, and that was that. There was a lot of really solid potential with certain twists, that weren't really set up that well beforehand, (with one exception being the wight that follows Johnny), and overall, the plot left me thoroughly whelmed. Again, this is something that I feel actually stems from Johnny being a shit PoV, because the more interesting parts of the Sanderlanche, happen to 2 other characters, with Johnny just winning a pretty meh fight.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I don't think that the world got explored to the fullest of its capabilities. Dan Wells has expressed interest in continuing the series, and I'd definitely be intrigued to see more of it, both dealing with the universe Johnny visited, and other potential time periods that are being monetized. I think there's a lot of mileage in the concept, I just wish we'd gone further in this book.

And if I'm being honest, that could be one of my issues with the book overall. I feel like it could have been a lot longer, and actually expanded on the really interesting ideas that were presented throughout the book, like the religions and the magic, but ultimately we didn't really get a whole lot of expansion on any of these things, except being told that they exist, which is a massive shame.

I could also see this dimension being used to explore the entire world, as we see characters from the Middle East and Asia at different points in the book, so I'm definitely not soured on the idea or the world, I just wish it had been handled differently, and perhaps, had this not been a side project for Sanderson, it would have been, but alas, here we are.

All in all, the book is a mixed bag. It doesn't break the streak that Sanderson has for me of never writing a bad book, but it is another one of his rare mediocre books. It's propped up quite a bit by the obvious love that Steve Argyle put into it. But I didn't connect with the plot, or the characters, with key exceptions that did prevent this book from being terrible. I would say, out of all the ones that I've read, this is probably Sandersons worst book, but it's still very far from a bad one. 2.5/5 stars.