Publisher: Baen Publishing
Author: Rick Cook
Title: Wizard’s Bane
Year Published: 1989
Wizard’s Bane is book one of Rick Cook’s Wizardry series. The premise is a bit different. Not a chosen one, but a normal guy grabbed from our world and pulled into one of magic. He has no powers, but what he does have is programming skills. Wiz – the main character is a programmer. Now this book was written in the late eighties (maybe earlier given how publishing works) so he is familiar with Cobol and Fortran – a bit outdated. But for the context of this book it works well. While as a teen I loved the book and didn’t see the flaws, looking back now there are a few characters I would have told off about 50% sooner than they were, but even now it works. The set up is amusing, the characters three dimensional, and the story isn’t your usual chosen one trope – more of a “Fuck it, here it goes” sort of story.
Bottom line, this is a fun read, though with a long slow set up, the rest of the series is just as entertaining and well worth the read.
