The Wiz Biz
(Books 1 and 2)
Rich Cook
Baen
Fiction, Fantasy
***
DESCRIPTION: 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 cubicle, 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.
You might also enjoy:
Pendragon: The Merchant of Death (D. J. MacHale, YA Fiction - An average boy finds himself in another world, helping primitive people fight an evil power)
Un Lun Dun (China Miéville, YA Fiction - Two modern girls are drawn to a surreal alternate London)
The Transall Saga (Gary Paulsen, YA Fiction - A boy suddenly finds himself alone in a hostile, alien land)
Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow (James Rollins, YA Fiction - Modern kids find themselves in a world of dinosaurs, lost civilizations, and magic)
The Iron Dragon's Daughter (Michael Swanwick, Fiction - Abducted into the modern-magic world of faeries, a human girl plots with a mechanical war dragon)
Mirror World (Tad Williams, Fiction - Through massive mirror gates, people from Earth travel to an unknown alien planet, where they find themselves stranded)
The War of the Flowers (Tad Williams, Fiction - A man is taken to the faerie world, where war is imminent)
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The Wiz Biz II: Cursed and Consulted
(Books 3 and 4)
Rich Cook
Baen
Fiction, Fantasy
**
DESCRIPTION: 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, the dragon 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.
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 Terrible 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.
You might also enjoy:
Pendragon: The Merchant of Death (D. J. MacHale, YA Fiction - An average boy finds himself in another world, helping primitive people fight an evil power)
Un Lun Dun (China Miéville, YA Fiction - Two modern girls are drawn to a surreal alternate London)
The Transall Saga (Gary Paulsen, YA Fiction - A boy suddenly finds himself alone in a hostile, alien land)
Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow (James Rollins, YA Fiction - Modern kids find themselves in a world of dinosaurs, lost civilizations, and magic)
The Iron Dragon's Daughter (Michael Swanwick, Fiction - Abducted into the modern-magic world of faeries, a human girl plots with a mechanical war dragon)
Mirror World (Tad Williams, Fiction - Through massive mirror gates, people from Earth travel to an unknown alien planet, where they find themselves stranded)
The War of the Flowers (Tad Williams, Fiction - A man is taken to the faerie world, where war is imminent)
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