Emily Daggett’s childhood dream of finding a wizard, discovering an extraordinary innate power and battling evil is coming true — fifteen years late and in the entirely wrong way.

First off, there's the wizard. Alexander Hartgrave is a thirty-year-old IT worker instead of a silver-haired mage, and he’s dead-set against playing the proper role of helpful mentor.

Worse, he thinks Emily’s extraordinary, all right — because she’s uniquely incapable of doing magic.

When adventure overtakes her despite (or rather because of) her oddity, she has to start seeing fantasy like a cold-eyed realist, and fast. Otherwise, her bookish expectations about good and evil will get her and a lot of other people killed.