Finished the Book eddition.

Well I managed to finish Off to be a Wizard and it was a fun  to read. To recap the book is about a boy named Martin who's in his 20's. He stumbles upon a file online that allows him to manipulate the everything in the universe. 2 days later he mucks it up and goes to medieval times to escape where he find that other people had the same idea. So he's taught by a guy named Phillip who teaches him to be a Wizard. Which is just what everyone who finds the file and escapes to that time disguise themselves as.  Most of the book is really just Martin getting used to the time and to other wizards, primarily Phillip who he grows close to. They started off rough with Martin trying to prove Phillip as a fraud in the beginning, but this grew into strong friendship as Phillip mentored him in how being a wizard works. He taught him about how to use the file and outlines what wizards have been able to do with it.
But what I'll be writing about is Jimmy or Merlin as he's known as in the time period Martin and the others are in.  Now Jimmy used the file to make the legend of King Arthur reality and essentially change around history to better suit himself.He made a sword by using the file and imbued it with magical properties to fit the description of Excalibur. He's essentially your run of the mill sack of garbage villain who has a craving for fame and power. When Martin and Phillip went to Camelot to get martin instated into the wizard guild, everything was made out of gold. The castle was painted gold,the statues of himself were gold, and even the guards' armors were gold. He was just a person who loved to be flashy. But what really made him a true villain was he wanted to make the world into a true fantasy world. He went off to try to make people orcs, elves, hobbits, and dwarfs, and ended up killing an entire village since, when you edit a person's physical traits in the file, you can end up doing serious damage. By making the people in the village shorter Jimmy essentially  made it so their organs didn't fit in their bodies anymore and killed them. The file can change a person's height at the caveat that the organs may not grow with them. Since organs and such seem to be a separate part of the code. But Jimmy didn't care, he just saw it as an accident and felt it didn't matter.
This dream of wanting a real fantasy world spawned from the realization that nothing they do int he past doesn't apply to the future. No what they did in the past it didn't seem to affect the future. The reason for this is summed up to parallel universe and the file auto correcting itself when it came to small changes. So from this Jimmy tells Martin that he's making these changes because in the end they're all a program in a computer which means they don't really exist. That everyone is just a bit of data he can edit and play with. And just before this he preached about how he's making things better by undoing the mistakes that have occurred. He wanted to kill Hitler's parents and have him adopted to a Jewish family to see how that worked out, wanted to see how things would be if Native Americans had guns. He felt he was fixing the future and making things better, and stated how a bit of fun can't hurt since no one really is a person in this computer program they all live in. All of this when he killed an entire village and broke one of the three rules that the wizard guild that pertain to changing physical traits. He's the chairman of this whole wizard guild thing and he breaks his own rules. Why make these rules if you're not going to damn well follow them. He truly just goes mad with power and proves how much of a sack of garbage he is. Which is why I found myself just hating him. He had little reason to do what he did besides greed. He was a show off with no humility. And above all a monster near the end, willing to sacrifice people to fulfill his own twisted fantasy.  He made people into orcs and those people were in constant pain, and followed his orders because he programed them to get angry at anything when he was unhappy. Everything just made him the bad guy and through out the book the Author makes it painfully obvious that this guy is going to a big conflict. As soon as Jimmy is mentioned all you hear is how much Phillip hates him and how much of a scumbag he is.This made it fairly predictable but the ending was still interesting, since I didn't really expect Jimmy's plan to be make the world into a cliche fantasy world, by changing people into various different races. So it still kept a surprise at the end which is nice. So that ends my entry and I'll probably move onto the next book in the series which is Spell or High Water Which I guess pertains to the female wizards since they all went to Atlantis according to the book.

The I actually read this time around blog post. Book:Off to be the Wizard

So last time I didn't post due to just not reading, since I didn't feel like reading after homework and such. But now I have and the book I'm reading revolves around what if our perception of reality was just a computer program. And what if you could find and change this program to change your life? Well this is what Martin does in Off to be the Wizard by Meyer Scott.  He finds it after he hacks into a telephone company’s server and finds this mystical file. The file was able to alter his height, position, money in his bank account, and travel back into the past. When he first gets it for the first 24 hours he tries to lay low with it and just use it to add a few hundred dollars to his account, teleport down the street and back home, and travel back 5 minutes in time to talk to himself. But after that next day, he fucks it all up. He makes huge changes to his bank account having a shopping spree buying a new car, furniture, and a computer. The government finds that he’s somehow changing money in his bank account and hunt him down. Martin runs away and travels back to 1150  medieval England since he figures with his phone that allows him to access the file he could pass as a wizard.Also just to add context he made an app for his phone so he can edit his bank account, position in the world, and time period.

Now  it bothered me that he fucked it all up in less than two days. He seemed like a sound guy when when he had the foresight to think he could get in trouble with this file. But no, next day he thinks he’s god and that no one can touch him. I want to like Martin but so far in the book it proves to be just a cocky asshole. An example of this was when he travels back to 1150 he meets Philip who is the town’s wizard, but is actually another person who found the same file Martin did. Philip does absolutely nothing to antagonize Martin, but Martin is convinced Philip is a con artist since he assumed all Wizards were at the time. And I can see  why he may think that cause magic is more tricks, but all Philip is trying to do is talk to Martin about where he’s from. But no Martin has to prove he’s the real magic man and Philip is a fraud. He challenges him to a duel and gets wrecked by Philip. There was no reason for Martin to do this Phillip again didn't seem evil, he was more trying to help Martin since when he had to do a prove his magical abilities  for the inn he wanted food from. Phillip covered for him when the patrons asked why he needed to be alone to do his magic, saying how he understand that magic needs to be done behind closed doors.  In this part of the book Martin is just getting plastic bags saying it’s magical see through fabric, which he time travels back to his time to get. But ya he does his tricks and Philip tries to support him  by saying he is a wizard, since Phillip is the town’s wizard and has that type of authority. Phillip is just being a good guy.

Now despite me not liking how irrational Martin can be, I still feel he’s a fun character since I personally like the reading the asshole characters. A part of that could be that I identify a little bit with them since I feel I can come off as a one. Of course I try to keep a control over it and do it around people I feel know me well enough to know i’m just joking. But bottom line I like reading those kinds of characters. One reason why I liked Catcher and the Rye last year in English was that Holden was kinda a jerk and I felt I related more with him. So Martin being a bit of an ass I think I can enjoy that in this book and i’m curious to see if Martin really grows up from this. Will he change and be a bit wiser like a wizard? Well that’s all I have to write here, so have a good day and hope my swearing wasn’t off-putting, but sometimes you just need to drop a few F-bombs.