I don’t read anywhere near enough books. Since The Event though, I’ve been walking more, and as I mentioned in my AirDots review, I enjoy reading listening to books as I walk. I’m a massive time travel fiction fan. There’s rarely a film with a time travel element that I’m not a fan of. The whole concept of re-writing history, broken timelines, butterfly effects and incongruity enthralls me.
I’m not sure how I discovered Off to Be the Wizard (affiliate link) by Scott Meyer, but it’s been on my Audible wishlist for a few months. I finally picked it up at the start of December. The book was published back in 2014, but I’m a slow reader, and clearly late to the party on this one.
The story revolves around a chap who discovers he can manipulate reality, like it’s just bits on a disk somewhere. He starts simple, changing his own physical location, and moves on to putting money in the bank, and later, uses time travel to evade capture by the authorities. Our protagonist is blasted back into the distant past, where he lives a new life as a wizard.
The whole concept was incredibly geeky, which I found very appealing. The Matrix-like premise that we’re all just represented by numbers in a file somewhere made sense. As the story moved on, some future parts were clearly foreshadowed, so I was excitedly anticipating their introduction or resolution. This book quite was quite hard to put down.
I found the narrator - Luke Daniels - engaging and entertaining. His voice is very listenable, and the characterisation was well done. The book is over 10 hours in duration, but I didn’t tire of Luke’s voice, as I sometimes do with other voice artists.
Off to Be the Wizard actually made me want to go walking more, so I could burn through the book and calories. I was invested in the story, and the characters. The story has a few interesting twists to keep it fun and surprising. By the end I felt quite satisfied.
I didn’t realise it was the first part of a longer story until I reached the very end. There’s an audio introduction and sample for the next chapter in the story at the end of this book. I’m looking forward to the next installment, Spell or High Water (affiliate link) by Scott Meyer, which I’ll get to soon enough!
Off to Be the Wizard by Scott Meyer - ★★★★☆ 4/5 stars