This was a fun romp and adventure! I liked the characters and the pacing was engaging. It made me want to read Sanderson's other books.

For lovers of Princess Bride and Tress of the Emerald Sea.

This was a fun ride and the humour kept me going.

Brandon Sanderson is an author that really knows how to write a book, and I've loved all of the books I've read so far by him. When the Secret Projects were announced, they all sounded interesting. The idea of awaking in a totally different time and the handbook you had exploded, sounds pretty scary, but also made me very curious. So The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England was quickly added to the list of books I wanted to read.

As most Brandon Sanderson book, The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, is filled with humor, interesting characters, a unique world, and a story that keeps you reading. Our main character wakes up in a new to him world and doesn't remember a single thing about himself. He slowly starts to remember things as he discovers this world and runs into different people. It was entertaining to read how he slowly remembered things, while also getting bits of pieces of the handbook he had that isn't complete anymore.

The plot is interesting and I appreciated that this character really wanted to redeem himself as he slowly learned what he did and why. It's really hard to review this book without giving away too much. As I said, this is an easy read, but for some reason it didn't blow me away. It kept me reading, but I didn't feel as invested and connected to the characters as I have while reading other books by Brandon Sanderson. If you're looking for a more lighthearted book by Brandon Sanderson, I will still recommend this one. It wasn't my favorite, but it definitely wasn't bad. I guess I just had different expectations!

The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson. Pub Date: June 27, 2023. Rating: 2 stars. At the reccomentation of my cousins who absolutely love this author's work, I decided to give him a chance and request this novel. Unfortunately, I think this author just is not for me. Sci-fi is a tough genre for me and it is really hit or miss, this one was. a big miss. I did not enjoy it at all, but if you enjoy this author's other works I would definitely give it a try! Thanks to #netgalley and #torpublishinggroup for this e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

Just as great as everything else I've read from Sanderson. I'm really enjoying his low stakes standalones.

I love quirky.... but this was too quirky. This was like if Skyward were just MBOT scenes. You think want that until you get it and it gives you a headache.

I think the concept was cool, a man wakes up in the middle of what appears to be the Medieval time period without a clue as to who he is or why he is there but knows he is from the future and has the occasional "magical" power. But Sanderson threw sooo much into the story that it was just...alot. And I didnt really care for the main character. And what was coming was rather predictable.

On the plus side, it was very funny and original.

Overall it was meh.

Thanks to netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tor Publishing for the copy of the book to review. While I have never read any of Brandon Sanderson’s books, I know that he has a strong and devoted following, including my dad and my brother. I however found The Frugal Wizard to be a difficult read. The tone and overall story just wasn’t for me. I went into the book expecting a fantasy and it turned out to be a sci-fi novel, which I really don’t enjoy. I’ll have to give a different one of his books a chance because this one just wasn’t for me. I do think it's cool that this is one of the books from his famous kickstarter.

Brandon Sanderson once again delivers a fantastic book. Not part of his Cosmere universe, but that doesn't stop the book from having an excellently built world. Following our protagonist along as he remembers who he was and then becomes who he was meant to be was an excellent journey. The supporting characters were so good as well. Definitely characters I would love to spend more time with. Looking forward to re-reading this one. Cannot recommend it enough!

“To date, my performance was an obvious one star. Could be worse, but only as a result of gross incompetence.”


This was a bit of an odd duck of a book.

It is my first Brandon Sanderson one so I am not sure, but I get the feeling this may be a bit divergent from his typical work in terms of tone.


So here’s the sitch.

‘You’re a wizard, Harry!’

Just kidding. Wrong book.

Picture this instead: infinite other dimensions that you can purchase for yourself and can access at your will that will be versions of Medieval England.

“Your life isn’t unremarkable. You are merely living in the wrong time. Embrace your destiny— whether it be to bring Promethean light or exert relentless domination— and travel the dimensions.”

Now, as you can imagine, such an endeavor seems pricey, but fear not! There are FRUGAL ways of horizontal time travel. They are all outlined in the handy-book written by Cecil G. Bagsowrth III which is what this book is named after.

Do be aware though, that this handbook will not, in any meaningful way, help you survive whatever you may encounter. It will just scare you into all the upgrades as good marketing is meant to do.

“One star. Barf up some alphabet soup, and you might create a more useful text.”

Now picture this: You haven’t bought a dimension but you find yourself exploded into one with no memory of who you are, why you’re there, or what’s happening. And there are marauding Vikings, wights, skops, boasts, and no internet. Pretty vivid imagery, right?

That’s the premise of this book and the predicament of our main character, John West, who is a combination of 10% Adam West, 10% John Wayne, and 80% Peter Quill. (But he does have nanobots that make him nearly invincible which always helps when you’re not down the road from a hospital or even a Walgreens.)

“I’d woken up in the middle of a burning field. The review almost wrote itself. An ideal experience, if you happen to be a pyromaniac cow. One star.”



I think my favorite part of the book were John’s inner reviews of various things he was experiencing.

“Was that a clue to who I was? Some kind of… reviewer?”

[As a reviewer myself, this was truly inspiring.]

“Five stars. Hiding place sufficient, despite the lack of trees.”

“Four and a half stars. Might be better with puppets.”

“that guy could be profound. And depressing. Five stars. Should be narrating documentaries about disasters like Chernobyl. Or my love life.”

As a potential tourist to interdimensional travel, it definitely helped me make the decision to throw away my brochure and be content with living vicariously through him instead.



Thrown into this warring era, with some of his coworkers that are total monsters (can I get an amen?), John eventually ascertains the full dilemma he finds himself in:

“These poor people, crushed between forest and ocean, with a god that didn’t like them and an evil mobster from the future looking to dominate them. It was like the rock and the hard place had been joined by a bulldozer and a jackhammer.”



This book had the easiest character development a writer could wish for. He literally has no idea who he is so there’s only one direction to go.

It was a radical transformation from shockingly oblivious to powerfully self-aware and we got to watch every devastating blow as John Adam West Wayne goes from realizing the depth of his cowardice to deciding he can be the nanobot hero this dimension never asked for, is actually killed by, but also desperately needs.

“Turns out, even a coward can save the world. So long as you leave him with no other options.”

“I was moving toward something I believed in, rather than away from what I feared.”

And this moving scene:

“‘I’ve learned to fear someone else more than I do you.’
He frowned. ‘Who?’
'The man… I used to be.’”

(And yes, right after he says this with that heroic Chris Pratt-like scowl he crushes something like a boss and 80s rock music ensues.)



You may be wondering— but where are the wizards?! And are they always frugal?!

This is also the cool part of the story. Anyone who lives in the present can go back in time and be a wizard. Not with magic…

“While modern pop culture has co-opted the term to evoke the image of long beards, pointy hats, and the occasional bescarred boy with a wand, in ancient times it wasn’t so much the magic that identified these individuals. It was knowledge.”

Wizardry is really just having new and advanced knowledge that others have not obtained yet. Or crazy high-tech blasting guns like any good space movie even if it’s in Robin’s ‘Hood. (Get it?)

And turns out, frugality really doesn’t move the plot forward so we’re going to slowly back away from that term like it’s not even there.



The worst part of the book is hopefully just my personal experience and won’t affect yours at all— I read an advanced reader’s copy in digital format. Well this book includes sections from the incepted-frugal-wizard-handbook thing including pictures and footnotes and such (as far as I can tell).

But apparently we don’t have the technology to create a digital version where you can see pictures in full or whole sentences. Everything was sliced like a loaf of bread and then stacked up like Jenga.

I’m sure those parts of the book are real fun and neat and everything, but sadly, I’ll never know right now.

I’m sure the real deal book will have all the pieces.



Overall, I enjoyed this read. Interesting concept. Good, unique characters. Fun setting. I love a good redemption story and a crazy old lady in stealth-mode. The lore of the world there was hard to grasp and since I believe in one God, the mythology of the gods didn’t do much for me and felt very watered down, but hey, it’s totally fiction and from another dimension so I'll give it a pass.



This is part of a series that Sanderson wrote during the Covid years, but they are all stand-alones.

Sanderson said on the Kickstarter page: “These books are an excellent place to start into my work, as they are each standalone novels that require very little previous knowledge of anything I've written before… you're going to get a sampling of the many different types of things I like to do.”

His many books take place in the ‘Cosmere’ shared fictional universe that he created (like the Marvel universe). I plan to read more from this series and just other Sanderson books in general. He seems like an author I’m going to like and I’m curious what else this Cosmere has to offer.


In the author’s note Sanderson described this book as “a whiteroom story, where a character wakes up with no memory and has to figure out who they are along with the reader.”

He mentions another “excellent example” of this in the book Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which I agree is a fantastic book and as such I am happy to market here as well.



Final Review:

The building blocks were solid, but would have preferred less Jenga. 4 stars.



[Content Advisory: 0 f-words, 1 s-word, 54 uses of ‘hell', 47 uses of the d-word; no sexual content]

This wasn’t my favorite from Brandon Sanderson—it felt a little rushed—but I liked the idea of a futuristic man going back in time and having to survive in the Medieval period.

I love Fantasy/ Comedy books. Fans of Kill the Farm Boy, Discworld, Landover and such will be overjoyed with this new direction from Brandon Sanderson.
The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England was a snippet of an idea, that kept niggling the author waiting to be written. Finally Sanderson gave in and the book was born. A magnificent beast of a book!

A man is dropped into a forest looking vaguely like something from Robin Hood. He has no memory of himself or how he got there only that people were chasing him. He has remnants of a book called The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook that was toasted on his arrival at this place. Hopefully he can figure out who he is and get back to where he belongs. Many mishaps and miscommunications are forthcoming in a most delightful and entertaining way. I can’t recommend this book enough. It will fill your cup overflowing with goodness.

This book was my least fav Brandon Sanderson book unfortunately! It had a really interesting concept but I disliked the setting as well as the main character. BS mentioned that this was his first ‘white room’ story, where a character wakes up with no memory and you find out who they are as the character does. And it didn’t really work for me.

Overall this was a good idea, with a bad execution. Also… ACAB. Didn’t know this was a cop story lol.

🌈Queer rep: none

This book was such a fun read. As always, Brandon Sanderson characters are amazing. I love their growth and development. Also, the world building is amazing. I will never not recommend a Brandon Sanderson book!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

I will not be dedicating any reviews to Brandon Sanderson after learning about his continued donations to anti-lgbtq associations of massive amounts of money. A gay character here and there does not excuse you from funding hatred.

This book was unlike any of Sanderson’s other works that I have read… it was refreshing but also I think I am more of a Cosmere girl. I would definitely recommend this for any of his fans wanting to branch out!

Frugal Wizard's Guide is not quite what I expected, but it was a fun ride!

Unlike the title suggests, our main character does not actually travel to Medieval England, and he's also not actually a Wizard. In truth, this book is far more science-fiction than it is fantasy, and that might impact your enjoyment if you pick it up with certain expectations. I'll admit that I was a bit thrown at first, but I still managed to enjoy this story quite a bit.

I'm still a bit of a Brandon Sanderson newb (I've yet to read Mistborn or Stormlight Archives), but his writing in these Secret Project books just feels so confident. You can tell he had so much fun working on these! I've read some of his much earlier works, Warbreaker and Elantris, and you can definitely see how far his ability to capture a unique writing voice for his stories has come. Tress was whimsical and fairytale-esque, Frugal Wizard was sarcastic and a bit self-deprecating. It might be an oversimplification to boil it down to just a few adjectives, but it was really masterfully done. I'm looking forward to picking up the next two Secret Projects!

The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson
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A man wakes up not knowing who or where he is. He soon discovers he is in Medieval England with only pages left of the book that was meant to be his guide.
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What I liked:
-I did the audio and Kate Reading and Michael Kramer are still my favorite narrating duo.
-I went from, “wow this book is a bit out there” to “what is going on” to “ok this book is pretty brilliant”.
-I really enjoyed the ending, there was a lot of action going on.
-There was a fun reveal at the end that I should have seen coming.
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4⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A fun and quirky read. Well written with great world building. A great read for anyone looking for something new and fresh and...... fun. Very entertaining

I love Sanderson, the Cosmere books are some of my all time favorites and I’m slowly working my way through the rest of his books.
This book was just not it though.
The concept of this book was interesting, and I do like memory loss stories where we learn what’s going on along with the MC, but in this case his lack of memory helped contribute to the lack of world building. I wanted to know more about the world that Johnny came from, about the history of time travel, and just more about all of it,
But instead we got some really small snippets of his life there and random bits of info about his world, it just didn’t really feel complete. Maybe I expected a lot more since the Cosmere is one of the most incredibly detailed world buildings I’ve ever read, but it just…lacked.
The world of medieval England was a little better, it was reminiscent of real world England but with a little bit of a magical twist, and ya know, time travel.

It also felt like it was trying a little too hard to be a comedy? Between the star ratings and just Johnnys general personality it just seemed really forced at times.
I don’t have too much overall to say on this one. I didn’t have it, but I wouldn’t read it ever again. If it was a debut author I wouldn’t have had such high expectations or been as hard on it, but for a Sanderson novel it just wasn’t enough for me.