Mordrin McDonald: 21st-Century Wizard

I was understimulated by the first mention of Mordrin McDonald: 21st Century Wizard. Joanne Rowling's ubiquity has been in danger of buggering up wizards: you find yourself in danger of echoing that don in the Eagle and Child who greeted another self-congratulatory reading session between CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein with the necessary phrase: "Not more fucking elves."

But this was good. Funny good, pithy good. Mordrin is a laconic, lazy, pissed-off Scottish wizard, doomed to attempt, with vitriolic reluctance, heroic tasks in an unheroic world. No missing back-story here on, for instance, Mordrin's name: his grandfather was bored during Countdown a thousand years ago: yes, that's the kind of throwaway line I enjoy, and this is full of them, and it also reunites Jack Docherty and Gordon Kennedy from TV's sorely missed Absolutely, which is a humungous golden spitting dragon of a good idea.