Spell or High Water by Scott Meyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I read the first book in this series, Off to be the Wizard (Magic 2.0 #1) last summer and enjoyed it for the fun read it was. I didn’t dive right into the sequel as I planned to, because reasons. This may partly explain why it didn’t grab me immediately as the first novel did.
I think I was reading the Edgewood series by Karen McQuestion series at the same time, and while I quite enjoyed the first one, the sequels were really just more of the same. I think that’s why I haven’t reviewed those yet – I don’t really have anything positive or negative to add to the discussion and I’ve found that in the absence of anything positive that I want to discuss, my writing leans a little towards the critical side, and that’s not fair.
So I suppose I was feeling a little jaded about sequels at that point. But then, on my second approach to Spell or High Water, it stuck. I’m not sure exactly where the changeover occurred; for some time I was unenthusiastically plowing through familiar territory and in the next minute I found myself really enjoying the story.
In Spell or High Water, the characters of Off to be the Wizard take their act on the road, visiting Atlantis. Actually, it’s not really the lost city, rather a utopian construct created by new character Brit the Elder. See, her timeline split so that there are actually two versions of Brit occupying the same timeline – one who is proceeding through time semi-linearly and the other who has already experienced these events. I think it was around the introduction of this character that I put down the book for a while.
But once past that odd storyline, Spell or High Water settles into a good rhythm with the split plotlines of Martin, Gwen & Philip trying to stop Brit from being killed, and that of the formerly banished Jimmy trying to make his way back to the program. Jimmy’s scenes are actually quite funny, making this character much more enjoyable to follow than in the first book.
There’s a lot of great stuff with the man-servants of the female-run Atlantis and the seemingly pointless assassination attempts, but mainly author Scott Meyer focuses on what he does best: dialogue. This guy writes terribly funny stuff. The characters of Philip & Martin bicker like an old married couple and play well off of the third lead, Gwen, but really all of the characters get some fantastic lines. The entire complement of “wizards” are a riot, and there’s a whole lot more of them this time.
Ultimately, that is why, against all expectation, I preferred Spell or High Water to Off to be the Wizard. Both are a good time, but it was faith restoring to find a sequel that builds off of all of the good ideas from the original work while pushing forward with new ones. Recommended.
