Book Review | The Outsorcerer's Apprentice by Tom Holt

A happy workforce, it is said, is a productive workforce.

Try telling that to an army of belligerent goblins. Or the Big Bad Wolf. Or a professional dragons layer. Who is looking after their well-being? Who gives a damn about their intolerable working conditions, lack of adequate health insurance, and terrible coffee in the canteen?

Thankfully, with access to an astonishingly diverse workforce and limitless natural resources, maximizing revenue and improving operating profit has never really been an issue for the one they call "the Wizard." Until now.

Because now a perfectly good business model—based on sound fiscal planning, entrepreneurial flair, and only one or two of the infinite parallel worlds that make up our universe—is about to be disrupted by a young man not entirely aware of what's going on.

There's also a slight risk that the fabric of reality will be torn to shreds. You really do have to be awfully careful with these things.

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An affectionate send-up of the fairytale from the author of such sarcastic tracts as Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages and May Contain Traces of Magic, The Outsorcerer's Apprentice features overlords and underlings, self-aware wolves and woodcutters, plus a prince from another world: ours.

Benny isn't a prince of anything hereabouts, however. Point of fact, he's in a bit of a pickle when the book begins. He has his final exams at Uni in a few weeks, and with his whole future before him, all of a sudden he doesn't have a clue what he's been doing. Studying to be a mathematician, maybe? In a moment of inspiration that some might mistake for laziness, he realises what he really needs is a good, long break to take stock of his situation. To that end, he borrows his Uncle's "omniphasic Multiverse portal" (p.137) and travels to a parallel reality where he can pretend to be a powerful person, because of course. Wouldn't you if you could?

The YouSpace XP3000, designed by Professor Pieter van Goyen of Leiden [is] capable of transporting you to any or all of the alternate realities that make up the Multiverse. Intuitive targeting software and state-of-the-art Heisenberg compensators mean that all you have to do is think of where you'd like to go, and you're instantly there. It's as simple as that. 

All you'll need to operate your YouSpace XP3000 personal multiverse interface is a dream—and a doughnut. (pp.136-137)

What Benny—pardon me, Prince Florizel—doesn't yet get, and won't for quite a while, is that his very presence in this innocent kingdom is destined to affect its host of fantastic inhabitants, including, but not limited to, dwarves, dragons, goblins, elves, etc.

Readers come to this conclusion somewhat sooner than fair Florizel; by way of Buttercup, a wily woodcutter's daughter waylaid with increasing frequency by wolves wearing old ladies' clothes. She grows so sick and tired of their charade that she starts worrying she may be single-handedly endangering the population—because of course Buttercup kills all the animals that attack her. She's had a lot of practice, and they'd eat her otherwise.

Guest Post | The 5 Guest Posts I’ll Never ($^#*&^@) Write by Kameron Hurley

God's War is a Very Good Book. I confess I'm yet to read the rest of the Bel Dame Apocrypha—in my defense, the series is only now being rolled out locally—but when the author approached me about composing a potential guest post for you folks, I don't mind admitting how warmly I welcomed the suggestion.

Immediately I started wondering what I could possibly talk her into. Kameron Hurley has written some incredibly progressive pieces in the past—like this essay for A Dribble of Ink, currently being mooted for a Hugo—but she also writes a lot of lists. And I... I don't love lists. 

But a list with a difference? A list about lists? The more I mulled what had begun as a joke over, the more I realised how interested I'd be in reading her response. And to Kameron's credit, as you'll see, she took my suggestion (almost) completely seriously.

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So, it’s guest post season for me, with work, here, here, here, here, and here and... oh, you don’t even want to see my calendar for the rest of January.

Let’s get meta instead.

When you approach bloggers for guests posts (as I approached Niall), it’s often best to ask them if there’s a particular topic they’re interested in. It’s their house, after all, and it makes sense to pick a topic of interest to their readership. Funny enough, Niall sort of (flippantly, I think) asked me what five guest posts I wouldn't write if somebody asked... and that got me thinking. 

Because, dear reader, though I’ll happily talk about health crises, institutionalized racism, and critique the SFWA—there are some topics these days that I won’t touch.