 |
Class Dis-Mythed | Rating | |
| D | |||
| Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| MythAdventures | Another Fine Myth, Myth Conceptions, Myth Directions, Hit or Myth, Myth-ing Persons, Little Myth Marker, M.Y.T.H. Inc. Link, Myth-Nomers and Im-Pervections, M.Y.T.H. Inc. In Action, Sweet Myth-tery of Life, Myth-Ion Improbable, Something M.Y.T.H. Inc., Myth-Told Tales, Myth Alliances, Myth-Taken Identity, Class Dis-Mythed, Myth-Gotten Gains | ||
Skeeve is still on hiatus, but his friends keep sending him people who desperately need some pointers on how to use magic in the real world. Skeeve is too nice to turn a needy supplicant away, and so he starts his own impromptu school — despite the fact that he took his break from M.Y.T.H. Inc. because he felt he didn't know enough magic! But the more time goes on, the more it seems that there's something a little more to this than a few necessary lessons in restraint and picking the right spells for the right problems. And unfortunately, he's right.
The book began on a very bad foot with me. The portion where Skeeve was accruing students was incredibly irritating. Aahz has always been a little too fond of gold for his own good, and Skeeve is still a bit reluctant to turn down a friend. But neither are idiots. Yet the story pretty much depends on them being so greedy or naive that they fail to ask about some obvious details.
Not least of which is, why are Skeeve's friends sudden;y dumping half-trained mages on him, all at once? If it's a coincidence it's a mighty unlikely one, and if it's not should he be pressing for the straight goods? And why doesn't he or Aahz pick up on why some of them are downright desperate for his advice? Words like "need" and "survive" should make their ears perk up, and that they did not is outright baffling. The authors forced the plot so hard here I could almost hear choo-choo noises.
Once past the tooth-gratingly awful opening, it's not actually too bad. Not great, by any means, but not bad. The story is a bit more laid-back than usual, which is a change that some might take as positive and some otherwise. The lessons are inspired, too, which helps a great deal. These are not just lectures Skeeve is giving them.
Then it got bad again. The last third of the book consists of watching Skeeve sit back and watch his students in action. What happens is important to them, but only barely to Skeeve. It's merely a matter of pride. To me the story just kind of flopped. You don't push your main character to the sidelines and have him do nothing for seventy, eighty pages!
The opening is the only part of the book that is really awful. But the rest isn't anything to brag about, either. It really could have been made a lot more tense and exciting simply by involving Skeeve a bit more in the ending. This is one of those books where I feel the core concept is decent but the execution needs a major overhaul.
| By Title | By Author | By Rank |