The Wizard's Code

By William a Hainline

Edgar fell asleep at his desk writing a for-loop and woke up in a world where magic is real, organized by a Guild that has been doing it wrong for four hundred years, and governed by an Archduke who would very much like to be the only person allowed to do it at all.

This is, by any reasonable metric, not Edgar's problem.

Edgar is a programmer. He has glasses that don't stay up, a caffeine dependency that predates his bachelor's degree, and a Dial - a thing he built in forty-seven sleepless hours as a hobby project - that has somehow become the most disruptive object in a world he didn't know existed until last Tuesday. The local magic has taken one look at Edgar and decided he's interesting, which is the kind of compliment that tends to come with severe consequences.

He has a mentor who teaches by asking questions she already knows the answer to. A nemesis who can fold space in ways that make his stomach unhappy. A talking deer who speaks to perhaps four people per century and has, for reasons it hasn't explained, decided he's one of them.

What he doesn't have is a way home. Or, increasingly, a clear reason to look for one - because the Archduke's thirty-year plan to monopolize all magic is nearly complete, and Edgar's Dial is the one variable it can't account for.

The Wizard's Code is a novel about the thing that happens when you realize your hobby project has been running in production this whole time - in a system considerably larger than the one you designed it for.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GRPJQY7G
• ISBN13: 9798233456916
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: William A. Hainline
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"