I remember when this book first came out. I remember picking it up,
looking it over, and saying to myself, “Oh. Another incompetent wizard.
How nice.” Then I put it back on the shelf. At that point I’d read a
number of Terry
Pratchett‘s books about Rincewind the inept
wizard, and a number of Craig Shaw Gardner’s books about
Wuntvor the Eternal Apprentice, as well as several other singletons along
the same lines, and frankly I was tired of the whole thing. I’m still
very fond of Rincewind, but you couldn’t pay me to read anything by
Craig Shaw Gardner these days (nor for many years prior to
this one). But I was browsing about the bookstore the other day, and saw
it on the shelf, and thought to myself, “You know, this book has been
continuously in print for the last ten years. Perhaps it’s better than
I expected.” So I bought it, and today (so as not to go through the
Heinleins I bought too quickly) I picked it up and read it.

Frankly, it was a victim of bad packaging. Daimbert, the hero, isn’t so
much inept as lazy; as a student he’d been too fond of drinking and
skipping lectures to learn what he was supposed. And while the cover
makes it look like a zany comedy, it’s really nothing of the kind, which
is a good thing–few authors are really good at it, and bad zany comedy
is unspeakably bad, like a failed souffle. Which is why I no longer read
Craig Shaw Gardner; I made the mistake of trying to read one
of his books aloud to Jane once. Like the souffle it fell; and there was
no point in trying to revive it again.

But I digress. Daimbert, new graduate of the Wizard’s School in the
City, is hired as Royal Wizard of a small kingdom called Yurt. And
Daimbert hasn’t been there very long when it becomes clear that there’s
something wrong. The King is aging unnaturally; Daimbert’s wizard locks
are broken; the evil something the previous Royal Wizard though he had
permanently pent up in his tower chamber is gone. And eventually,
Daimbert figures out what it is.

As a mystery, the book is only so-so; the clues were clear enough that by
the time Daimbert fingered the nominal culprit the answer had been
obvious for quite a long while. But as a fantasy, it was quite
competent, and it provided me an entertaining afternoon while Jane was
celebrating her birthday. (She had a group of girlfriends to an English High
Tea. I was not invited. I was not sorry not to be invited, either.
Some things Man was not meant to know.) The book has a good heart.

One other thing that’s worthy of note: it’s one of the few fantasy or
science fiction novels I’ve read in quite a long while in which organized
religion is treated at all positively; and more surprisingly, the
religion is Christianity. What a Christian church is doing in a fantasy
world I have no idea; but the local priest, while lacking somewhat in
humor, becomes Daimbert’s good friend. The presentation of Christianity
is neither detailed nor profound (nor, in this sort of book, should it be
either)–but the very fact that it’s positive is remarkable.