#ssp2

JOMP Book Photo Challenge

Title: The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Does this book contain talking bananas?: No. It talks about hypothetical sentient talking bananas and it contains images that depict said hypothetical talking bananas, but when it comes to the real thing, actual talking bananas? None.

As the Year of Sanderson comes to a close, I thought I'd put forth my ranking of the Secret Projects.

[I tried not to include any big spoilers, but I still wouldn't recommend this one if you haven't read all of these, tbh!]

Opinions? Let me know in the poll!

#4: The Frugal Wizard's Handbook

I mean...listen. I read Sanderson for the Cosmere, so a non-Cosmere book was never gonna compete, at least for me. I enjoyed it well enough--it had quite a fascinating premise that got more & more disturbing the more you thought about it, and I liked the mechanism of having pieces of the actual handbook throughout. The main character wasn't my favorite, but I had a pretty good time following him around.

#3: Tress of the Emerald Sea

Tress only falls so low (if third place is low?) because I liked the other two books so much. I really liked this book! It was relatively simple for a Sanderson book, but in a really good way; it was just a joy to read. Plus, the aethers are incredibly cool, and the way information about them was slowly revealed as Tress learned more and more things you could do with them...*chef's kiss.* I also guessed the reveal somewhat early, and that made me proud of myself, because I am not usually good at that.

#2: Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

I really loved this book! The world-building was top-notch, and so atmospheric and creepy: the Nightmares, the Shroud, the Machine. I was completely engaged with the mystery of how Yumi & Painter connected, and I did not guess it in the slightest (I really thought it was gonna be time travel). Yumi was amazing; I love an accidentally bi Sanderson protagonist. Painter really grew one me, and was not the incel I feared he would be. Design was an absolute delight. I like it when Hoid suffers. It was all great.

#1: The Sunlit Man

The book is definitely engaging with a lot of the recent discourse around policing, in some obvious and some less obvious ways. I never fully bought into the protagonist’s temporary characterization of himself as a ‘heroic cop’, and didn’t feel that the book bought into it either - it felt from the start like a story with a deeply flawed protagonist who was going to need to grow beyond his past attitudes and assumptions. I did assume that he’d bought the ‘universe’ he was in rather than hiding in it, so that was a surprise.

The characterization of Ryan and its subversion - the initial presentation of him as an ideal hero, followed by the revelations that he’s both a pretty crappy friend and doesn’t care about the people of the medieval-universe - is the most direct way the book deals with cops, since he’s the one cop character who appears in it, but I don’t think it’s the most important way the book engages with the topic. The most important way doesn’t openly mention cops at all.

Near the climax, John realizes that the way organized crime operates is by making people feel weak, powerless; by saying, ‘you have only the power I give you, and the second I take that away, you are nothing’. The crime boss kept John around as an example for that reason. And then, crucially, with Sefawynn’s story it explicitly connects that to Woden and says: he is behaving in the same way. He is sending the message of, ‘you aren’t obedient enough, unquestioning enough, to deserve my protection,’ and leading people like Sefawynn into deception because deception is the only way they can square their support for him with his actions. And at the climax, Sefawynn rejects both that and Woden. In short, the story turns around and says to the reader: look at the way the organized crime boss is acting. What other authorities, ones with social power and status and legitimacy, are in fact behaving in the same way? Which ones are ruling by force and fear, saying that that they’re the only thing that can protect you and give you security, and justifying their actions by saying any of their victims just weren’t good enough, just weren’t obedient enough, compliant enough?

In additionto this, there’s a thread running through the story of what I’ll call the redemptive power of vulnerability and weakness. John comes into the ‘parallel universe’ with virtually no knowledge and no power, and as a result is reliant on the people he meets. This leads to him getting to know them, to value them, to understand them and become friends with them and see them as equals. Ryan, in contrast, comes into the ‘parallel universe’ with all his knowledge and resources intact and is able to recruit the locals - in fact this means he’s still reliant on them, but it doesn’t feel that way to him: to him they’re not equals much less friends, they’re subordinates or tools. As a result, John values and cares about them and Ryan doesn’t. When you’re trained and conditioned and empowered to regard everyone you work around as enemies, tools, or bystanders, you’re not going to end up treating them as equals. You can only treat them as equals if you’re willing and able to be vulnerable to them. It’s why a lot of things in society - not only policing - won’t work right without a shift away from saving/fixing/protecting people to accompanying them, to letting them say “I need X and I want to do Y about it” and people - social workers, teachers, health professionals, child welfare workers - saying “What can I do to help?” rather than saying “I need you to do X, Y, and Z, and I will give you A, B, and C.” There are limits - medical professionals know more about medicine than laypeople do, and if someone says they need herbs to cure their cancer they can be (literally) dead wrong - but working with people rather than to or for them means you’re treating both themselves and yourself more as people rather than positions. Policing’s a heavier version of a similar thing, because avoid vulnerability at all costs is so deeply embedded in its culture. And that’s the reverse of what should be. Anyone whom society gives a gun to needs to be more, not less, willing to be vulnerable, precisely because the power they’ve been given makes others vulnerable to them.

If you don't already love him, please allow this sample collage to change your mind:

It’s fascinating to me how obviously these books were written in a global pandemic. Like, obviously we knew that, but I’m so interested in the way that influence is showing up in the books.

In Tress of the Emerald Sea, we start the story with a girl who Does Not Leave Home, under order of the government. Breathing the air outside of her home is Definitely Fatal, and there are many variations on the Very Fatal Things you could inhale. People wear masks to protect themselves, but it’s hardly exact protection. You’ve even got people with a long-term version of the spores living under their skin until they die, in the form of the aethers. Tress is a pandemic novel, where the spores are covid, and someone is risking exposure for the sake of someone they love.

The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook For Surviving Medieval England is a mouthful of a title. BUT it also has some really interesting influences too! Right at the start of the book, we learn that the main character is a cop- and we learn it in the most copaganda series of sentences I think I’ve ever read. Then later, we learn he is not a cop, but his friend is, and that friend is subsequently portrayed as Absolutely Perfect Person Arbiter Of Justice. Then later, we see that the cop-friend is just a bastard in so many ways. Through Ulric and the whole idea of buying dimensions, we see capitalism ruthlessly profiting off of people who have no say, usually making their lives actively worse for money or entertainment. We see medical tech that can protect you from terrible diseases, and we get hints of people who refuse to use it.

To me, ssp2 (NOT typing that title again) shows so much of what was happening culturally during lockdown. ACAB, with a bastard cop character throwing locals and “losers” in harm’s way, when the other characters want so desperately to believe that there is someone doing actual justice in a fucked up world. Vaccines, and antivaxxers. Killing entire dimensions of people who don’t have a say for the sake of a profit SURE SMELLS LIKE THE WAY ESSENTIAL WORKERS WERE TREATED.