I think portal fantasies work well for kids. You know…Narnia. But for adults, it’s hard not to make them cheesy. In this novel (which started as a podcast series) Andrew Klavan owns up to the cheese.

The main character, Austin Lively, gets unaccountably transported from contemporary Los Angeles to a medieval fantasy kingdom. The only thing that connects the two worlds is a mysterious book. I can barely type it without cringing. It sounds so bad. But Klavan miraculously handles it in such a way that it’s not cheesy after all. He writes in first-person, and Austin’s voice is so strong, so crass, so humorous, and so typical of what you’d expect from a Hollywood hack, that the authenticity of it works.

I sped through this novel not because this is my kind of book but because Klavan is a great writer. He writes legitimately good prose. He had me hooked on the unraveling mystery. I cared about the foolish protagonist and wanted him to win despite his many flaws. I became intrigued by the layers of powerful people involved and wondered what it all meant.

Overall, this story is about a young man who is underperforming in every area of life with no incentive to better himself. How do you take someone like that and transform him into a selfless man of stout heart and right belief? From what I know of Klavan, he believes this is an actual problem in society right now. How can men become men again?

This whole book is kind of a content warning. There is a lot of foul language and violence. There are some scary images, but I’m a wuss, and I did fine. There is a fade-to-black sex scene. Women are praised for being traditionally feminine. I have no problem with this because I embrace traditional gender roles, but I can see why modern tastes may find this unpalatable.