It is a dark time. The magical forces of the Wild Wood grow stronger every day, pushing humans further and further from even the Fringe. The wizards of the Council of
the North are losing the battle with the Dark League of the South, who have finally found a ruler capable of organizing the unethical, backstabbing lot of dark wizards
into a cohesive force of evil. In a desperate bid for help, the wizard Patrius performs a Great Summoning to bring someone from another world to aid their cause... a
spell he dies performing. The person he grabs is no great sorcerer, but a Silicon Valley computer programmer, Walter "Wiz" Zumwalt. A world of magic and wizardry is a far
cry from California, but Wiz discovers that spells and programs aren't all that different. Is a computer geek with a mind for code any match for the Dark League? Even if
he does win the day, will his revolutionary new brand of magic - a magic anyone, regardless of inherent magical talent, can master - save the world, or bring it to the
brink of destruction?
This was originally published as two books: Wizard's Bane - The wizard Patrius performs a risky Great Summoning. He hopes to bring a new power to bear in a coming war between the northern
wizard's Council and the power-hungry Dark League, but dies from the energy drain as the spell is completed. Programmer Wiz Zumwalt finds himself abducted from his Silicon
Valley office, literally dropped into an alien world with a dead wizard by his feet and only a recalcitrant hedge-witch named Moira to guide him. Why was he brought here,
and what did Patrius expect him to do - unless, as Moira suspects, the late wizard's spell grabbed the wrong hero? The Wizardry Compiled - After defeating the dark wizards, geek-turned-hero Wiz finds himself at loggerheads with the wizards of the Council, unable
to convince them of the importance and potency of his new program-based magic. They resolutely cling to the old ways, where magic is an elusive and inpenetrable thing for
all but the most elite. On a trip to the countryside to resolve a minor problem, Wiz gets a shocking dose of reality when he sees how the long-fearful human population has
responded to his magical programming language, using it as a weapon to recklessly strike back at anything, friend or foe, that stands between them and expansion into the
Wild Wood. The magical creatures of the World will not stand for this, and a great conflict is in the making. Saddened and overwhelmed, Wiz wanders alone into the forest
to clear his head and is kidnapped by the remnants of the Dark League. Meanwhile, his wife Moira has seen how the efforts to perfect and teach his revolutionary magical
programming language have overwhelmed her husband. Clearly, he needs help. That means a trip to Wiz's home world, and the strangest job offer a pack of Silicon Valley's
best programmers have ever encountered in their lives.
Review
Whoever strung these two books together must have done so blindly. The editing was lousy, paragraphs misplaced and lines ending in the middle of sentences. Since Cook
jumps from character to character every few paragraphs - an irritating writing style - the lack of spaces between those jumps made for times of serious disorientation until
I worked out who and where the story had jumped to. It wasn't a bad story, on the whole, even if Wiz lusting after his hedge witch guide got a little old. I also thought
things could've picked up faster, or maybe Wiz could have caught on to the spell/programming connection sooner and not spent so much of the first section whining about how
useless he was. The second part took a while to get rolling, too, but had a little more humor to it, and once it picked up more happened than in the first part. I liked
pieces of these stories, and there were nice concepts explored, but often the plot wandered, and I got tired of not spending more than a page or two with any given set of
people.
Wiz Zumwalt is still in the magical World, where his Silicon Valley programming skills have made him a formidable wizard. Fellow programmers Jerry Andrews, his former
cubicle mate, and Danny, a young hacker now married to the quiet June, are helping Wiz teach others the programming language that lets them manipulate magic as if it were
a computer program. There are still several bugs in the system, though, and the nonhuman inhabitants of the World are anything but welcoming of this dangerous new
magic.
This book was originally published as two volumes: The Wizardry Cursed - Wiz and his companions from both worlds are tying up a few loose ends in the devastated city of the Dark League when an elf
maiden appears and gives a disturbing prophecy, hinting at a new danger to both the magical World and the "real" one. It seems that another pair of programming wizards
(with far less moral fiber than Wiz or his friends) have stumbled onto the secret of the magical World. Dark powers are granting the pair a special place to prepare a
conquering army composed of magic and technology, an army against which none will be able to stand. Inevitably, Wiz and the Council of wizards will have to confront this
new danger... a task complicated by a dwarven assassin party, gremlins, a downed fighter pilot, and the unusually meddlesome presence of the elves. The Wizardry Consulted - Wurm, an ancient and powerful dragon, plucks Wiz from the battlements of the Wizard's Keep and whisks him away to a distant
village. Tension between the dragons and the humans along the borders of their lands has always been high, but the spread of Wiz's new magical programming language is
changing the balance of power. Since Wiz created the problem, Wurm figures it's up to him to come up with the solution... or face the consequences directly. The abducted
Wiz tries to help the village where Wurm drops him off, but finds the residents unwilling to accept help from a strange wizard - a strange wizard who arrived on a dragon's
back, no less. Desperate times calling for desperate measures, Wiz decides a quick career change is in order, and with a little fast talking he becomes the magical World's
first-ever paid consultant on dragon problems. Helping - and at times hindering - him are a local thief, a petty charlatan, a council full of infighting politicians, and an
irascible ghost. Meanwhile, the programmer's illicit use of "real"-world Internet technology has been detected by the FBI, triggering a chain of events that may lead to the
revelation of the existence of the magical World.
Review
This was a case of it's-already-in-the-house-so-I-might-as-well-try-it reading. Taken individually, the first part (originally The Wizardry Cursed) had more going
for it than the last part, but both grew tedious. There's only so much comic mileage you can get out of a programmer making a reference to twentieth-century pop culture or
programming jargon and having the simple-minded residents of the magical World mistake the meaning or simply stare in open-mouthed incomprehension. Likewise, there is only
so much mileage in said simple-minded residents mangling twentieth-century pop culture references and programming jargon to oh-so-humorous effect. Most of the women exist
to fret over the fates of their men (and/or to sleep with real-world guys), and the majority of the magical World is portrayed as a mass of literal-minded buffoons who
wouldn't last half a minute in California, even as the Californians quickly become the new great power in their own magical home world. Cook's habit of jumping to new
characters every paragraph or two is magnified in these stories. Rather than spend time developing characters or building the world, he finds a new silly character or
situation and jumps there. It's a very annoying style.
The last part, The Wizardry Consulted, feels like a short story stretched out long past its ideal length. Wiz is out of character as a phony, double-talking
consultant, and while I appreciate that consultants are a ripe target for comedy, that alone wasn't enough to hold my interest. It especially failed to hold my interest when
page after page of Wiz giving double-talk nonsense presentations is trotted out before me in full, repetitive, mind-numbing detail. It would've been less tiresome and
possibly more effective to just show the start of the presentation, then cut to the "after" sentiments as Wiz reflects on the disastrous affair with a few choice metaphors
over a mug of ale. Of course, then Wiz and his companions would have actually had to do something for most of the book, so I guess that wasn't possible. As for the threat of
discovery, the bumbling FBI agent storyline goes nowhere after gobbling up far too much page count, making the matter an unresolved non-issue. But, then, half the subplots
seemed forgotten by the end anyway, so it wasn't the only hopelessly tangled loose thread. Had the final story been alone, it would have been a good candidate for a one-star
rating. If I didn't have a policy about never reviewing a book I hadn't read to the end, I never would have bothered finishing.
In short, don't bother with the Wiz Biz series. Save your time and your money for books worthy of them.
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