Rick Cook (1944–2022)

This book was a fun quick read. A bit of a nostalgia trip, too. Who shops at malls these days? Who prizes a mink coat? Who can retire to a tropical island on $500,000? The book was mentioned in a reader review of Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff, and though I didn't think it was quite as good as the Huff book, I did enjoy it.

It was a little strange mixing 80s computer programming with a fantasy series but it was a fun read. I wouldn't recommend this series unless you also have a geeky love of coding because, honestly, beyond that quirk it's not really that good. Still, it gave me a smile. I may continue the series, but not right away.

I enjoyed this much more than the silly cover led me to believe. A great 'First Contact' novel, with efforts at diverse representation at thought. Amazon should make it into a five season series.

How a Master Programer became a Master Spell Slinger.

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Walter “Wiz” Zumwalt is a bit out of sorts. You see his day started off as normal where he went to his job fixing all the mistakes that the other programers made. It was a bit of a slog but someone usually came up with a entertaining way to make a program crash and Wiz usually came up with a equally entertaining way to fix it. This was also how Wiz got his nick name as it seemed sometimes he was working magic to get things working show more again. Life was normal and Wiz was content with computers since it meant that he didn't have to deal with people. Unfortunately for Wiz the Universe had other plans.

One minute he is untangling a stubborn line of code and the next he is dodging fireballs, backing away from the still smoldering corpse of the wizard that summoned him and being dragged to safety by a woman that he feels strangely attracted to even though he has never met her before.

What Wiz will find out is that he is a variable in a war that has been going on between the forces of light and darkness for a very long time. This world runs on magic and he has none. Strangely enough though a magic spell looks a lot like a computer program...

Though the premise of this book isn't exactly original it still manages to tell a entertaining tale of a fish out of water or in this case a fish finding itself in water and not quite knowing what to do with it. I liked this story as most of the characters actually seem like they could be real people. They have their flaws and there failings but they try to work through them and don't instantly always do the right thing. As Wiz struggles to find his place in his new world he eventually realizes that his actions have consequences and he has to take responsibility for those consequences, even if he isn’t directly responsible for what is going on. The book moves at a good clip and doesn't really have mood swings from comedy to dead serious like the wizard in yurt series or the rouge agent series. All in all a good read if your looking for a fantasy fish out of water book that is a little different from the norm.ma.c show less