2016;
305 pages. Book #21 (out of 21) of the “Mythadventures” series. New Author? : No, but the first one where she’s
not just a co-author. Genre : Fantasy;
Humor; Dimension-Travel. Overall Rating
: 7½*/10.
Business has been a bit slow lately at Myth
Inc. Some of that is due to the
competition undercutting their prices – Myth Inc. is the best at recovering
priceless artifacts, and generally they only take the top-dollar cases. They still have a healthy amount of money in
reserve.
So
when a man named Looie approaches them to find something for him in an alternate dimension,
and wants a price-break to boot; they turn him down. Even when the head of Myth Inc., Bunny, wants
them to take the job.
But when they find out just where Looie’s artifact is located – in
Winslow- attitudes change. Winslow is
the most luxurious vacation spot in the dimension, and it prides itself on
never saying “no” to any request from any of its customers.
What’s
wrong with combining business with pleasure?
What’s To Like...
Myth-Fits is the 21st, and latest,
entry into (the
late) Robert Asprin’s Myth Adventures
series, and I espied it in my local library’s “Recent Additions” section the
last time we were there. I recently read
another one of the later entries (reviewed here), and was rather
disappointed. I am happy to say this one
does a much better job of catching the initial spark in the series.
I
liked the choices of the Myth Inc. characters here. It was good to see Aahz get some major ink, as
well as my favorite MacGuffin, Gleep, tagging along. The rest of Skeeve’s crew: Tananda, Bunny,
Chumley, and Markie, all lend their unique slants to the story, and happily, my three
least-favorite characters, Guido, Nunzio, and Uncle Bruce, get either scant or
zero attention.
Winslow was a neat new dimension to explore, a whole city dedicated to
providing for you as if you were on a cruise or lounging around at Club
Med. There are four main plotlines: (1)
find the Loving Cup; (2) find out why the lines of magic at Winslow are so hard
to draw power from; (3) figure out who the “other magician” is that
evidently is also searching for the Loving Cup; and (4) get Bunny to tell why she's suddenly so worried about the business's bottom line.
As
usual, the story is told from a first-person POV (Skeeve’s); and as usual,
there are witty pseudo-quotes to start each chapter. I enjoyed going on the scavenger hunt with
Skeeve and Company, and it’s always neat to come across that delightful British
phrase “and Bob’s yer uncle!”
There is a decent, slightly twisty, stutter-step ending. As always this is a standalone novel, as well
as part of a series. It does help if
you’ve read the initial book though, just to understand the Aahz/Skeeve
relationship. There’s a bevy of various beasties
vacationing on Winslow, a couple of way-kewl artifacts to search for, lots of magic, and
plenty of Asprin-inspired wit.
Kewlest New Word. . .
Fleering (v.)
: laughing imprudently or jeeringly.
Others : Dirndl
(n.); Ambit
(n.);
Excerpts...
“(She) must be looking
for the Loving Cup, too.”
“Why do you say
that?” I asked. She could have been
looking for anything!”
“Occam’s razor,
kid,” Aahz said, wearily.
“Was he a
barber?” I asked. (pg. 52)
“They threw me
out of the Central Help Desk!”
“Why?”
“No reason!”
“No reason?” she
asked, with a little smile. “You managed
to provoke Winslovaks into making you
leave the courtesy desk instead of letting you do what you want? Jeopardizing their dimension-wide reputation
for never saying no to any request?”
Aahz pursed his
lips until he managed to squirt the words out.
“I was just
trying to push them a little. The sooner
we get that cup back, the sooner we can get out of here.”
“And by push you
mean bully, cajole, and harass the staff and probably everyone who was waiting
in line. Maybe even random passersby who were minding their own business?”
“. . . Maybe.” (pg. 182)
“Stop trying to make me have
fun!” (pg. 190)
The
quibbles are minor. For a fantasy series
that is rooted in the concept of dimension-travel, we don’t travel to a lot of
places in Myth-Fits. There are three: Myth Inc’s headquarters in
the bazaar on Deva, Winslow, and a brief-but-perilous detour to a dimension
called Maire. Still, both Maire and
Winslow are new places for the reader, and they’re the setting for at least 90% of the book.
Some
of the plays on words are overused and get tiring very fast; in particular the
Pervect/Pervert witticism. There are
some footnotes, but they’re just cheap plugs for earlier books in the
series. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld footnotes have me spoiled, I guess.
But
these pesky things are minor. Myth-Fits is a fun, fast, easy read, and it was a
pleasure to discover that this series has regained some of its pizzazz.
7½ Stars. Some
authorship data, gleaned from Wikipedia.
Myth-Fits is Book 21. The first 12 books were penned by Robert
Asprin alone, and the next 7 were co-authored by him and Jody Lynn Nye. Only the last two (Books 20 and 21) are attributed solely to Ms. Nye.
It
was therefore a happy surprise to read this latest work, and find it to be the
equal of the earliest works in the series, which happen to be my
favorites. My two-cent opinion is that
Jody Lynn Nye has basically saved this series from the dustbin, similar to the
fine job Brandon Sanderson did for Robert Jordan’s Wheel
of Time series after the latter passed away.
Bravo, Ms. Nye! May you be inspired to write many more
adventures for Skeeve and Aahz.
No comments:
Post a Comment