The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England is a Rare Sanderson Miss

Brandon Sanderson’s Secret Project #2 is less than the sum of its parts.

Brandon Sanderson has four secret projects coming out this year, and one normal book slated for a November release on top of that, to say that this is a prolific year for him would be an understatement. The first one of his secret projects was a success (4.6/5 on Goodreads is a high score, even compared to Sanderson’s other books), but this one… not so much.

Secret Project #2 (or its annoyingly-long title, The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England) is unique within the context of the secret projects. It is the only one not set in the Cosmere — Sanderson’s own version of the MCU — , and it is the only one that take place on (some version of) Earth.

This book is about a (at least at first) nameless main character who woke up in a slightly different version of medieval England (for example, the people here worship Norse gods, but with slightly misspelled names like Woden and Friag instead of Odin and Freya), but he’s forgotten everything about himself, so he needs to figure things out, quickly.

Despite the fact that Sanderson is my favorite author, I’ve never been a fan of his non-Cosmere…