Books: Off To Be The Wizard By Scott Meyer (2012)

"Martin Banks is just a normal guy who has made an abnormal discovery: he can manipulate reality, thanks to reality being nothing more than a computer program. With every use of this ability, though, Martin finds his little “tweaks” have not escaped notice. Rather than face prosecution, he decides instead to travel back in time to the Middle Ages and pose as a wizard. What could possibly go wrong? An American hacker in King Arthur’s court, Martin must now train to become a full-fledged master of his powers, discover the truth behind the ancient wizard Merlin… and not, y’know, die or anything."

While certainly not an original premise (A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court comes to mind, as well as TRON), Scott Meyer’s Off To Be The Wizard is often imaginative, clever, and well written. I’m also assuming people with advanced knowledge of computers will understand the mechanics of Meyer’s world building here. The humor is regularly funny, and the situations mildly silly, but the book does flow very easily and never tips into parody (which is hard when doing a parody of this genre).

The characters are fun as well, though I found Martin to be a bit unlikeable for most of the book, while finding Phillip (the wizard he first meets in the Middle Ages) to be far more three-dimensional and interesting. Then there is Jimmy, modern day nerd who is living in the past. The problem with Jimmy, for me, was that it’s no huge surprise he becomes the villain of this first book in this series. Meyer tries to give us some misdirection, tries to make Phillip seem guilty, but it comes down to how Stanley Kubrick and Jack Nicholson made Jack Torrance from the movie version of The Shining pretty crazy from the start. In Stephen King’s book, it’s a slow turn from loving family man to possessed killer that Jack goes through. But in the film, it’s clear the moment Jack appears, the audience knows he’s already a few tacos short of a combination platter. Same with Jimmy, as Meyer writes the character a bit over the top; trying a bit too hard to convince the reader that Jimmy is sane. And it’s obvious from his introduction he is loony tunes. The ending is a bit anti-climatic, as well, but logical (and offers one of a few moral messages within the book) for these nerds. 

And again, I start another series, with four books out now, and a fifth due this summer. Seems no matter how I try, I find myself circling back to multi-volume books.