Out of Spite, Out of Mind
Magic 2.0 • Book 5
by Scott Meyer
Why You'll Love This
Imagine hating your future self so much you'd rather let her glitch out of existence — that's just Tuesday in Scott Meyer's world.
- Great if you want: comedic fantasy that plays time-travel logic completely straight
- The experience: breezy and fast — best read in one or two sittings
- The writing: Meyer builds absurdist premises on tight internal logic, then milks every comedic implication
- Skip if: you haven't read earlier entries — the payoffs depend on series context
About This Book
What happens when you discover reality is just poorly maintained code, and the people most qualified to fix it are too busy arguing with themselves — literally? That's the predicament at the heart of Out of Spite, Out of Mind, where time travel has left one woman sharing a timeline with her own past self, and the two of them can barely stand each other. The stakes are genuine — a body glitching out, a relationship minefield, and a threat nobody seems to have noticed — but Meyer keeps everything grounded in the specific, messy logic of people who are very clever and only occasionally wise.
Meyer's great skill is building elaborate comic situations out of airtight internal logic, and this book is that approach operating at full confidence. The prose is brisk and conversational without being lazy, and the plotting rewards readers who've been with the series while still delivering satisfying chaos on its own terms. The humor lands because it earns it — absurdity layered over rules that actually hold together. If you want fantasy that treats both its magic system and its characters as genuinely worth thinking about, this one delivers.
