Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 14 years and 1 month old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

Once upon a time, Major Mick Gilligan, USAF, didn’t believe in Magic. Nor, had he been told of it, would he have believed in the elf Lisella, or cared that she had cursed master programmer Wiz Zumwalt, later of Cupertino and now of an alternate world where magic works like a computer program. But that was before he took his F-15 out over the Bering Sea on a top-priority intercept, came out on the losing end of a dogfight with a dragon, and found himself caught in a climactic battle that pitted Wiz and his fellow Silicon Valley hackers against a couple of computer criminals in alliance with the forces of primal chaos.

I just finished Rick Cook’s “The Wizardry Cursed” via Stanza on my iPhone. The third book in the series picks  up about a year after the events of “The Wizardry Compiled.” Wiz, Jerry, and Danny are splitting their time between continuing to refine their spell compiler and being stuck in treaty negotiations with the non-mortals with whom they had narrowly averted war.

Back in our world, Judith, one of the programmers from the project team in the previous book who worked on the spell compiler, still dreams of becoming a fantasy writer based on her experiences in the magical realm. While daydreaming about dragons and faraway lands, she steps off the curb and is hit by a car, ending up in a coma. One of her role-playing game group friends (and computer hacker), Craig, starts visiting her in the hospital and discovers that Judith sometimes talks of the strange land and the spell compiler.

With the help of another hacker named Mikey, and Judith’s coma-based mumblings (and stolen papers from her apartment), Craig starts to understand the workings of the spell compiler, which of course won’t work in the “normal” world. Suddenly, a dark, evil race (the Ur Elves) transport Craig and Mikey into a “bubble world” where both technology and magic work … a bridge between our world and Wiz’s. With the power of the Ur Elves behind them, Craig and Mikey start hacking out technological/magical combinations of war machines with the intent of taking over the world.

A stolen super computer (with real gremlins), a stranded Air Force pilot, the curse of an Elf named Lisella, and a group of dwarves intent on killing the alien wizard all play a role in the ultimate battle between the good people of the world and the Ur Elves and their pawns (Craig and Mikey). How will it play out?

Not exactly difficult reading (certainly not on a level with “Anathem“), Cook’s magical/technological world continues to serve as a nice thing to have around on my iPhone for some light reading on the go. Next up in the series: “The Wizardry Consulted.”