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slferg's review against another edition
5.0
Matt is frustrated at Alisande's refusal to set a wedding date. When he finds out she's reluctant to marry him because he's not royal, he flies into a rage and swears an oath to God that he'll go win a kingdom and throne. And is promptly taken up on the offer, not by Alisande but by heaven. He tries to say "oops, didn't mean it" but decides he really did. So he's in the evil kingdom of Ibile and picking up friends as he goes. He frees a dracogriff from a sorcerer's trap, helps out a cyclops, saves a maiden from pursuit when she is fleeing from a castle under seige and runs into some old friends. And learns a lot about faith and watching his temper and his mouth......
acaleyn's review
2.0
All of a sudden, this went from, "preachy with strong Christian overtones" to "so religious that if C.S. Lewis is at about a 6, this is a 12."
I don't think I'll be continuing the series.
I don't think I'll be continuing the series.
pendragyn's review
1.0
Nostalgia had me borrowing this one from the library after rereading the first one and... oof. I have almost no memory of this book, because I'd blocked it out apparently. Probably in part because of the awful Abbot and Costello-esque banter between Matt and Narlh (the half dragon/half gryphon that apparently Del Ray convinced Stasheff to add to the book.)
The other reason I likely blocked this book from my memory was the characterization of Matt. It's supposed to be three years since the end of the first book, and in that time Matt hasn't learned anything about keeping his temper in check or watching what he says. He hasn't figured out more about how magic works. He has somehow become a worse person than he seemed to be in the first book, not helping people clearly in need of help for no clear reason at all, unlike how he acted in the first book. (He wasn't fitting into the amoral skeptic cliche well enough I suppose, by leaping to their rescue without some external motivation.)
The other reason I likely blocked this book from my memory was the characterization of Matt. It's supposed to be three years since the end of the first book, and in that time Matt hasn't learned anything about keeping his temper in check or watching what he says. He hasn't figured out more about how magic works. He has somehow become a worse person than he seemed to be in the first book, not helping people clearly in need of help for no clear reason at all, unlike how he acted in the first book. (He wasn't fitting into the amoral skeptic cliche well enough I suppose, by leaping to their rescue without some external motivation.)
jdlbrosz's review
2.0
Due to the ad-hoc nature and lack of rules for magic in this series this book left the impression that it was just resorting to deux ex machina to solve every problem within the plot.
smcleish's review
2.0
Originally published on my blog here in September 1999.
Sequel to [b:Her Majesty's Wizard|828440|Her Majesty's Wizard (Wizard in Rhyme, #1)|Christopher Stasheff|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1332625030s/828440.jpg|1868416], The Oathbound Wizard continues the story of student Matt after he has been thrust into another world in which he is a powerful magician. The best thing about the first book was the idea of a fantasy novel which took medieval Catholicism seriously, and that is carried over in a diluted form into The Oathbound Wizard. (The power of faith is somewhat lessened, probably to improve the verisimilitude of the plot.)
Matt has been unable to marry his beloved Queen Alisande of Merovence, because she cannot feel it is right for her country for her to marry one not of noble blood. (Because of the idea of the divine appointment of rulers, she usually instinctively knows the right course of action to take for the benefit of her people. Though she does feel that it would be right to marry Matt, her scruples derive from the suspicion that her love for him is overcoming her supernatural knowledge.) After three years, Matt is very frustrated, and in a moment of temper swears an oath that he will overthrow the evil usurping sorcerer holding the throne of the neighbouring kingdom of Ibile. Meaning this as a figure of speech to express his emotion, he has forgotten the spiritual power of words in this world, and so he is committed to a quest.
In this second novel, Stasheff is not quite so careful about the background as in Her Majesty's Wizard. He manages, for example, to get the names of the kings of England wrong. This is in discussion with Robin Hood, conjured up from another parallel universe, and I suspect that the reason that the king following Richard and John is named Edward rather than Henry is related to his background reading on the Robin Hood legend. The tales, now traditionally associated with Richard I's crusading, apparently developed during the reign of Edward III, and it may be that Stasheff assumed he followed the earlier kings.
As the novelty of the first in the series has worn off, the second does not seem nearly as good.
Sequel to [b:Her Majesty's Wizard|828440|Her Majesty's Wizard (Wizard in Rhyme, #1)|Christopher Stasheff|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1332625030s/828440.jpg|1868416], The Oathbound Wizard continues the story of student Matt after he has been thrust into another world in which he is a powerful magician. The best thing about the first book was the idea of a fantasy novel which took medieval Catholicism seriously, and that is carried over in a diluted form into The Oathbound Wizard. (The power of faith is somewhat lessened, probably to improve the verisimilitude of the plot.)
Matt has been unable to marry his beloved Queen Alisande of Merovence, because she cannot feel it is right for her country for her to marry one not of noble blood. (Because of the idea of the divine appointment of rulers, she usually instinctively knows the right course of action to take for the benefit of her people. Though she does feel that it would be right to marry Matt, her scruples derive from the suspicion that her love for him is overcoming her supernatural knowledge.) After three years, Matt is very frustrated, and in a moment of temper swears an oath that he will overthrow the evil usurping sorcerer holding the throne of the neighbouring kingdom of Ibile. Meaning this as a figure of speech to express his emotion, he has forgotten the spiritual power of words in this world, and so he is committed to a quest.
In this second novel, Stasheff is not quite so careful about the background as in Her Majesty's Wizard. He manages, for example, to get the names of the kings of England wrong. This is in discussion with Robin Hood, conjured up from another parallel universe, and I suspect that the reason that the king following Richard and John is named Edward rather than Henry is related to his background reading on the Robin Hood legend. The tales, now traditionally associated with Richard I's crusading, apparently developed during the reign of Edward III, and it may be that Stasheff assumed he followed the earlier kings.
As the novelty of the first in the series has worn off, the second does not seem nearly as good.
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