Humorous Fantasy Review: Myth-Gotten Gains (Myth Adventures #17) by Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye

Myth-Gotten Gains  (Myth Adventures #17)
by Robert Asprin, Jody Lynn Nye

Description:
Someone is collecting animated treasures and keeping them from their heroic destinies. Reunited with the lovely Trollop Tananda, Aahz the Pervect must help out a sword called Ersatz, and embark on a quest that just may restore his lost magical powers.


My Review:
As an Aahz book, this is a pretty good one. He's sucked into an epic-ish quest by an egotistical, fast-talking sword who promises him a gain on his investment. Then Tananda and Calypsa get involved, and the quest takes a turn from personal gain to a rescue mission.

I thought this one was kind of cute, but dang those Hoard objects fight a lot. I mean a lot! And every time they do, chaos ensues. Anyhow, what I liked most about this one was the tour through the odd dimensions and all the challenges the team has to overcome to obtain each magical item.

The puns were as delightfully groan-worthy as ever, some more than others, just as were some of the more colorful species Aahz and pals run across. All that being said, I really miss the Skeeve and Aahz pair ups, really, all the Myth Inc. folks. These're just funnier when the whole team's together.

Overall, I really liked this one, though the Hoard's arguments get a bit repetitive. I'd recommend this to folks who like a bit of fantasy laden with a good dose of puns and irreverence.

I received this book as a gift from my husband.


About the Authors:

Robert Aspirin

 

Robert (Lynn) Asprin was born in 1946. While he wrote some stand alone novels such as Cold Cash War, Tambu and The Bug Wars and also the Duncan and Mallory Illustrated stories, Bob is best known for his series fantasy, such as the Myth Adventures of Aahz and Skeeve, the Phule’s Company novels and the Time Scout novels written with Linda Evans. He also edited the groundbreaking Thieves’ World anthology series with Lynn Abbey. Other collaborations include License Invoked (set in the French Quarter of New Orleans) and several Myth Adventures novels, all written with Jody Lynn Nye.

Bob’s final solo work was a contemporary fantasy series called Dragons, again set in New Orleans.

Bob passed away suddenly on May 22, 2008. He is survived by his daughter and son, his mother and his sister.  

Jody Lynn Nye

Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as ‘spoiling cats.’ When not engaged upon this worthy occupation, she writes fantasy and science fiction books and short stories.

Before breaking away from gainful employment to write full time, Jody worked as a file clerk, book-keeper at a small publishing house, freelance journalist and photographer, accounting assistant and costume maker.

For four years, she was on the technical operations staff of a local Chicago television station, WFBN (WGBO), serving the last year as Technical Operations Manager. During her time at WFBN, she was part of the engineering team that built the station, acted as Technical Director during live sports broadcasts, and worked to produce in-house spots and public service announcements.

Over the last twenty or so years, Jody has taught in numerous writing workshops and participated on hundreds of panels covering the subjects of writing and being published at science-fiction conventions. She has also spoken in schools and libraries around the north and northwest suburbs. In 2007 she taught fantasy writing at Columbia College Chicago. She also runs the two-day writers workshop at DragonCon.

Jody lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, with her husband Bill Fawcett, a writer, game designer, military historian and book packager, and a black cat, Jeremy.


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You won't find this one on Kindle, but you can probably find a decent mass-market paperback copy on Amazon for a good deal.

Funny Fantasy Review: Class Dis-Mythed (Myth Adventures #16) by Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye

Class Dis-Mythed  (Myth Adventures #16)
by Robert Asprin, Jody Lynn Nye

Description:
After years as a court magician and inter-dimensional hero, Skeeve needed a rest. So he took some time off to study magic and relax. When a few months later several members of the M.Y.T.H. Inc. Team each ask him to train some talented, young magicians in "practical magic" he has to agree. But after the assassins attack and a manticore tries to eat them, the Khlad mage soon discovers that there is more going on than learning. His students are preparing for a very deadly magical game and you won't believe where. Worse yet, the game may be fixed, and the only way to save his students’ lives is for Skeeve to risk his own.


My Review:
Class Dis-Mythed takes us back to Skeeve, who's on a long-term hiatus on his home dimension, Klahd, trying to become the awesome magician everyone thinks he is. But somehow trouble always manages to find him. This time, trouble comes in the form of a random group of young magician wannabes who are looking for instruction from The Great Skeeve in practical magic.

This installment seems to be everything I've always loved about the Myth series. Robert Aspirin and Jodie Lynn Nye wrote it together, and unlike in the last couple of books, their styles seem indistinguishable in this one. The tongue-in-cheek humor, the bit of mystery, the randomness that feeds into a coherent conclusion, all are very well done and a lot of fun.

Overall, I loved this book and got a lot of laughs from it. I'd strongly recommend this to folks who love fantasy and humor, particularly corny humor.

I received this book as a gift from my husband because he knows I'm a fan of the series and we'd both thought no more of these were being written.


About the Authors:

Robert Aspirin

 

Robert (Lynn) Asprin was born in 1946. While he wrote some stand alone novels such as Cold Cash War, Tambu and The Bug Wars and also the Duncan and Mallory Illustrated stories, Bob is best known for his series fantasy, such as the Myth Adventures of Aahz and Skeeve, the Phule’s Company novels and the Time Scout novels written with Linda Evans. He also edited the groundbreaking Thieves’ World anthology series with Lynn Abbey. Other collaborations include License Invoked (set in the French Quarter of New Orleans) and several Myth Adventures novels, all written with Jody Lynn Nye.

Bob’s final solo work was a contemporary fantasy series called Dragons, again set in New Orleans.

Bob passed away suddenly on May 22, 2008. He is survived by his daughter and son, his mother and his sister.  

Jody Lynn Nye

Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as ‘spoiling cats.’ When not engaged upon this worthy occupation, she writes fantasy and science fiction books and short stories.

Before breaking away from gainful employment to write full time, Jody worked as a file clerk, book-keeper at a small publishing house, freelance journalist and photographer, accounting assistant and costume maker.

For four years, she was on the technical operations staff of a local Chicago television station, WFBN (WGBO), serving the last year as Technical Operations Manager. During her time at WFBN, she was part of the engineering team that built the station, acted as Technical Director during live sports broadcasts, and worked to produce in-house spots and public service announcements.

Over the last twenty or so years, Jody has taught in numerous writing workshops and participated on hundreds of panels covering the subjects of writing and being published at science-fiction conventions. She has also spoken in schools and libraries around the north and northwest suburbs. In 2007 she taught fantasy writing at Columbia College Chicago. She also runs the two-day writers workshop at DragonCon.

Jody lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, with her husband Bill Fawcett, a writer, game designer, military historian and book packager, and a black cat, Jeremy.


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You won't find this one on Kindle, but you can probably find a decent mass-market paperback copy on Amazon for a good deal.

Fantasy Review: Myth-Taken Identity by Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye

Available on Amazon

Myth-Taken Identity by Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Good, but way longer than it needed to be.

I received this book as a gift from my husband. He was poking around on Amazon and noticed this series had more books. We'd both thought that was done with since the author (Aspirin) passed away, but apparently he wrote a few more and transitioned the series into the hands of another author (Nye) before then.

Anyhow, about the book. It's pretty much what I was expecting: a bit of fantasy, a lot of puns, and some humorous multi-dimension sleuthing. If you like that sort of thing, I think you'll like this. I'm a big fan of the Myth series, but though I liked this book, I didn't love it.

It seemed like the authors were working towards a word count, trying to stretch the story to what is more readily accepted as novel length. It didn't really work, though. About halfway through, I felt like the story should be wrapping up, but it just spun off into another approach to the problem the characters were facing. And even when the thing seemed near resolution, the final chase was drawn out to the point I had no problem setting the book down for the night.

So, overall, it's a mildly amusing story with some cute characters, lots more content than needed, and not quite the spark that Aspirin's earlier Myth stories emit. I liked it, but I couldn't say I'd drop everything to read it again.

(And as an aside, what's up with that cover? Who's the pervect lady, I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be Masha, but she's not a pervect and isn't she supposed to have bright orange hair? Also, why the heck is Chumley now a fuzzy, purple teddy bear? I'm pretty sure he wasn't that furry before, but in these last few books suddenly he is. I think the cover artist looked at some earlier covers and didn't bother reading the book. Not his or her fault. Someone at the publisher should have been paying attention.)

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