The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England
Secret Projects • Book 2
by Brandon Sanderson, Steve Argyle
Why You'll Love This
Sanderson's most deliberately fun book drops an amnesiac into medieval England with nothing but scorched fragments of a cheesy tourist guidebook — and somehow that's the whole premise.
- Great if you want: a breezy, self-aware adventure that doesn't take itself seriously
- The experience: light and fast — closer to a weekend read than an epic
- The writing: Sanderson leans into comedy and pastiche; the in-world guidebook fragments steal every scene
- Skip if: you expect Sanderson's usual worldbuilding depth — this trades it for charm
About This Book
A man wakes up in a medieval English clearing with no memories, no allies, and no idea why people from his own time are hunting him. His one resource — a cheesy corporate guidebook for dimension-hopping tourists — arrived in pieces. What follows is a race to reconstruct both a shattered identity and a workable plan before things get irreversibly worse. It's a story about figuring out who you are when everything that defined you is gone, wrapped in the unlikely package of alternate-dimension travel and Anglo-Saxon village politics.
Sanderson uses the premise to play with structure in ways that feel genuinely inventive: fragments of the in-world guidebook appear throughout the narrative, delivering satirical corporate-speak alongside actual clues, and the result is funnier and sharper than it has any right to be. Steve Argyle's illustrations add a visual dimension that enriches the reading experience rather than decorating it. The tone is lighter and more comedic than Sanderson's epic fantasy, but the emotional underpinnings — identity, trust, belonging — land with real weight. It's a smaller-scale story told with obvious affection for the format itself.