Any one here read all of the Robert Lynn Asprin’s Myth series?
I stopped reading these books after book 10 (Sweet Myth-tery of Life), should I read the last 8?
Long version: In junior high and high school (87-93), I was big fan of these books. I loved the characters, the settings, and the style. The were light hearted adventure stories anchored by relationships that seemed genuine and “real”. the first six or so where stand alone adventures, and the author was turning out one a year. Then he made the mistake of signing a six book contract and trying a more ambition approach.
Aprin decided to do a six book story with a cliff hanger at the end of each book. He also decide to switch up the perspective and alternate between books told by Skeeve, the main character and other books told from the perspective of one or more of Skeeve’s group of friends. Then he got writers block and the books went from every year to every three years. Then in 1993, they stopped completely, with only four of the six books finished.
In 2001, a new book came out and I bought. I couldn’t finish it. The characters were not the same, the style was not the same, the dialog and relationships were completely different. It was like a different author just read the synopsis and tried to write a story. According to the forward, Aprin decided to write a book in between two of his earlier books to get back in the swing of writing the series, but it felt like someone else was writing it from his outline.
Are the rest of the books like the one from 2001, or like the earlier books? Are they worth reading?
I’m fairly certain that all the news ones are ghostwritten, as well as the Phule books past the first two. They are uniformly terrible and disconnected from the the prior books.
Jody Lynn Nye was his co-writer on the later Myth books, and Peter Heck was his partner on the later Phule novels. Both are hacks. OTOH, he wrote the Time Scout books with Linda Evans, who is a fine author in her own right.
I was afraid of that. I had also noticed the drop off of quality and lack of continuity in the Phule novels as well. Its too bad, as I want to see how things turn out in the stories, but the last one I tried was actually painful to read.
Wikipedia lists the last book as published in 2008. Of course it lists two that year, so I suspect it was JLN finishing up on either outlines or drafts by RA.
Yeah, just don’t read any further. The first Myth books were great, and if you can get the graphic novel editions, then do so. But the later books were just Bob trying to fulfill his contracts.