Heck, it’s been a while since I published any new posts. It’s not been much in terms of my activity all year round. I’ve managed to read a bunch of books, consume an enormous amount of anime content, work here and there, and did not have any capabilities to overcome my desire to write about “something worth writing about.” Yet perfect is the enemy of good, so here we are.
I’ve managed to read 12 books out of 21 in the series I acquainted myself with almost 15 years ago, and it was a funny and nostalgic adventure. The series is called the Myth Adventures and is written by Robert Asprin, and, later on, by John Lynn Nye.
The series follows the adventures of Skeeve, a young sorcerer apprentice whose elderly teacher gets killed during the assassination act. In a mere coincidence, Skeeve gets the company of a demon named Aahz from the Perv dimension. From early on, we know that it’s better to call the demon a pervect, not a pervert, and that demons are nothing more than Dimension Travelers, from across various planes of existence.
During all the books, we follow Skeeve, Aahz, and a myriad of other companions, seeing their growth and talents, allowing them to beneficially overcome various troubles our protagonist just loves to get himself into: we’ll face mafia, political wars, illegal gambling, assassination attempts, noir-like taxi driving and much, much more.
The formulae of most books are quite simple: the protagonist screws up badly, tries his best to fix up the situation, makes it worse, his friends try to help, make the problem worse, and then the protagonist finds out an original solution. This one works, but, most commonly, makes life more challenging in the future book. It’s simple, it’s cheesy, but it works the way formulae like these work in common TV series of 2000-s.
The books are very digestible; they rarely touch topics of gray morale, difficult choices, and moral dilemmas, which many readers are accustomed to nowadays. The series is comic and childish at some level, yet allows the reader to fall in love with the characters and world-building quickly, particularly interesting in the arc of the apprentice surpassing the teacher and related relationship implications. I read 12 out of 21 books and liked most of them. Later, books get tedious; it seems like the author got bored of his own characters and tried to experiment, changing the main narrator of the story to secondary companions, which felt out of place and not that interesting. I recommend trying out the first book for everyone who enjoys fantasy worlds even the slightest bit; it’s funny and optimistic and allows you to enjoy the magic world and smile a bit, which is very important. A little bit of escapism hurt no one.
NB: I got way less bored of these series than the Discworld. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I just don’t really enjoy reading Terry Pratchett. Forgive me, all the fans. It has too many puns, yet it has very relatable characters and amazing world-building.
7 / 10