Rating: 5
Year: 1982
Genre: Fantasy/Comedy
Read again? Yes.
Skeeve and Aahz are bored. The weather in Possiltum is rainy and miserable and there's not much for the Court Magician to do.
When Tanda (the hottie assassin chick) pops in looking for a shopping assistant, Aahz reluctantly agrees to let his student go with her. She lets Skeeve in on a secret: they're going to be looking for a birthday present for Aahz!
They visit several dimensions off the beaten path, looking for the Perfect Something Aahz could never have seen, ending up on Jahk, where Tanda spots a hideous Trophy. She tells Skeeve the rest of the secret: they're stealing the Trophy.
The caper ends with the Trophy missing, Tanda arrested for a theft she didn't commit, and Skeeve and Aahz putting together...a sports team?
Showing posts with label Myth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Myth. Show all posts
Friday, December 31, 2010
Myth #2: Myth Conceptions (Asprin, Robert)
Rating: 5
Year: 1980
Genre: Fantasy/Comedy
Read again? Yes.
Why, yes, every title will be a pun on "Myth!"
It's been about a year since Skeeve and his scaly demonic teacher defeated Isstvan (with a little help from some friends). Now they've been summoned to the Kingdom of Possiltum to try out for the position of Court Magician!
It's not until he wins the position that he learns the reason: Possiltum is about to be invaded by an enormous army. The Kingdom's own army is sitting it out because the guy who handles the king's money has bet that magick can defeat the mighty army, at a considerable savings in both lives and gold.
Now it's up to Skeeve and Aahz to defeat the largest army ever assembled! Can they do it with the help of a dragon, a hot assassin girl, an Imp, an elderly Archer, a stone gargoyle named Gus, and his buddy Berfert the Salamander?
Another short & sweet book, not too deep. I never paid much attention to this approach before, but I appreciate the relative minimalism of Asprin's style. Just the thing after four novels weighing in at 4,000 pages, with a cast of 1,100 characters!
Year: 1980
Genre: Fantasy/Comedy
Read again? Yes.
Why, yes, every title will be a pun on "Myth!"
It's been about a year since Skeeve and his scaly demonic teacher defeated Isstvan (with a little help from some friends). Now they've been summoned to the Kingdom of Possiltum to try out for the position of Court Magician!
It's not until he wins the position that he learns the reason: Possiltum is about to be invaded by an enormous army. The Kingdom's own army is sitting it out because the guy who handles the king's money has bet that magick can defeat the mighty army, at a considerable savings in both lives and gold.
Now it's up to Skeeve and Aahz to defeat the largest army ever assembled! Can they do it with the help of a dragon, a hot assassin girl, an Imp, an elderly Archer, a stone gargoyle named Gus, and his buddy Berfert the Salamander?
Another short & sweet book, not too deep. I never paid much attention to this approach before, but I appreciate the relative minimalism of Asprin's style. Just the thing after four novels weighing in at 4,000 pages, with a cast of 1,100 characters!
Myth #1: Another Fine Myth (Asprin, Robert)
Rating: 4
Year: 1978
Genre: Fantasy/Comedy
Read again? Yes.
Yeah, it's another series. I usually take a break from them once I've finished something like the 6-month slog through George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire." But Asprin's "Myth" books are at the opposite end of the spectrum from Martin's: the books average about 200 pages each!
Skeeve ia the apprentice to Garkin, who despairs of his student ever being a magician. Skeeve wants to be a thief and doesn't study as hard as he should.
Then Garkin is killed by an assassin sent by the mad magician Isstvan and Skeeve ends up apprenticed to Aahz, a scaly green pointy-eared pointy-toothed demon!
Can the two of them find Isstvan and stop him before he destroys the world?
Very light reading--both as far as the size of the book and in Asprin's writing. The plot is uncomplicated, with the characters sketched out enough to leave to the reader's imagination. I wish the gags were as funny now as they were 20 years ago, but it's still fun. Besides, I deserve a 2-day book! Rather than still meeting the main characters or just getting to the Big Crisis That Will Change Everything for the main character, we're looking at the inside back cover and ready to grab the next book.
Asprin's intent was to spoof the cerebrally serious Heroic Fantasy genre of the late 1970s. What he ended up doing was creating a genre of comic Fantasy, making way for Craig Shaw Gardner's "Ballad of Wuntvor" series and others.
Year: 1978
Genre: Fantasy/Comedy
Read again? Yes.
Yeah, it's another series. I usually take a break from them once I've finished something like the 6-month slog through George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire." But Asprin's "Myth" books are at the opposite end of the spectrum from Martin's: the books average about 200 pages each!
Skeeve ia the apprentice to Garkin, who despairs of his student ever being a magician. Skeeve wants to be a thief and doesn't study as hard as he should.
Then Garkin is killed by an assassin sent by the mad magician Isstvan and Skeeve ends up apprenticed to Aahz, a scaly green pointy-eared pointy-toothed demon!
Can the two of them find Isstvan and stop him before he destroys the world?
Very light reading--both as far as the size of the book and in Asprin's writing. The plot is uncomplicated, with the characters sketched out enough to leave to the reader's imagination. I wish the gags were as funny now as they were 20 years ago, but it's still fun. Besides, I deserve a 2-day book! Rather than still meeting the main characters or just getting to the Big Crisis That Will Change Everything for the main character, we're looking at the inside back cover and ready to grab the next book.
Asprin's intent was to spoof the cerebrally serious Heroic Fantasy genre of the late 1970s. What he ended up doing was creating a genre of comic Fantasy, making way for Craig Shaw Gardner's "Ballad of Wuntvor" series and others.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Musings: Comparing Magic--Transportation
My first introduction to magical transportation was Zelazny's "Amber" series. There are two poles to reality: Amber, which represents Order; and the Courts of Chaos, representing Chaos. Each of these poles is represented as a kingdom in its own right, with a source of Power available to those who can use it. Amber has her Pattern. Chaos has its Logrus.
Between these two poles of reality are Shadows, which you can consider as an infinite continuum of worlds, more orderly toward the Amber end, more chaotic toward the Chaos end, and encompassing all that exists--including our own Earth. Each Shadow is separate from its neighbors, with its inhabitants normally unaware of any other reality but their own.
To those with the ability to use (or be used by) those Powers are accorded the ability to move through and amongst those worlds at will in three different ways. One can begin in Amber and simply walk or ride a horse (for example), using their will to change aspects of the world around them until they've arrived at their destination. This takes the longest of the three, but might be the only way to get somewhere.
A much-more grueling version of Shadow-walking is the Hellride, where one's concentration must be complete. It gets you where you want to go more quickly than a Shadow-Walk.
The next way is by use of a Trump, something along the lines of a Tarot card. If you've been to a place or know a person well enough to draw them on a blank card, you can make a Trump for that place or person. Then you look at it, concentrate on it, exert your will to make it real, and if you've done it right you get a little window onto that place or person, and can step through (or bring the other person to you). In the first five Amber books, the Trumps are treated as something exclusive to the Royal Families of Amber and Chaos, but in the second set we find all sorts of people using them.
The third way is the hardest, and seems to be used more by those initiated into the Pattern. You must walk along the Pattern to reach its center (I'll discuss this in a later entry, but it's a horribly grueling contest of your Will against ever-increasing resistance); then you imagine where you want to be and command the Pattern to send you there.
The next series to come along was Robert Asprin's "Myth" books. Like Zelazny, Asprin's universe is a continuum of parallel worlds, but he calls them Dimensions. Just about any reality you can imagine is out there, somewhere--and all you need is a way of getting around.
If you can use magic and know your way around, you can cast a spell for shifting from your current Dimension to another one. You've got to know your target Dimension well enough, though, or you might end up somewhere else--and it might be a world where magic or Demons (Dimension travelers) aren't welcome.
The other method is mechanical--a pre-spelled ring, for example, or something called a D-Hopper, which I still think is pretty cool. It's a rod, maybe a foot long, and with several dials along its length. Set the dials for your destination, press the button, and *ZAM* you're there.
The most-recent series I've really gotten into is Mercedes Lackey's "Valdemar." Her approach to magic is by far the most complex of the three, but there's only one way of using magic to get around (not including the levitated barges some of her characters use, since the barges are still pulled by horses or mules). We only ever see the one world--no parallel realities to speak of, unlike the other two authors' works.
A Gate is a quick, but energy-expensive, portal between two places. To cast a Gate, the mage must know their destination well enough to form a mental image of the place, and only the highest class of mage can summon and use the Power needed to invoke the Gate's spell and hold the construct open long enough to use it.
One really neat aspect of Lackey's approach is that magic energy affects the world around it--for example, opening a Gate can trigger spectacular and violent thunderstorms.
Between these two poles of reality are Shadows, which you can consider as an infinite continuum of worlds, more orderly toward the Amber end, more chaotic toward the Chaos end, and encompassing all that exists--including our own Earth. Each Shadow is separate from its neighbors, with its inhabitants normally unaware of any other reality but their own.
To those with the ability to use (or be used by) those Powers are accorded the ability to move through and amongst those worlds at will in three different ways. One can begin in Amber and simply walk or ride a horse (for example), using their will to change aspects of the world around them until they've arrived at their destination. This takes the longest of the three, but might be the only way to get somewhere.
A much-more grueling version of Shadow-walking is the Hellride, where one's concentration must be complete. It gets you where you want to go more quickly than a Shadow-Walk.
The next way is by use of a Trump, something along the lines of a Tarot card. If you've been to a place or know a person well enough to draw them on a blank card, you can make a Trump for that place or person. Then you look at it, concentrate on it, exert your will to make it real, and if you've done it right you get a little window onto that place or person, and can step through (or bring the other person to you). In the first five Amber books, the Trumps are treated as something exclusive to the Royal Families of Amber and Chaos, but in the second set we find all sorts of people using them.
The third way is the hardest, and seems to be used more by those initiated into the Pattern. You must walk along the Pattern to reach its center (I'll discuss this in a later entry, but it's a horribly grueling contest of your Will against ever-increasing resistance); then you imagine where you want to be and command the Pattern to send you there.
The next series to come along was Robert Asprin's "Myth" books. Like Zelazny, Asprin's universe is a continuum of parallel worlds, but he calls them Dimensions. Just about any reality you can imagine is out there, somewhere--and all you need is a way of getting around.
If you can use magic and know your way around, you can cast a spell for shifting from your current Dimension to another one. You've got to know your target Dimension well enough, though, or you might end up somewhere else--and it might be a world where magic or Demons (Dimension travelers) aren't welcome.
The other method is mechanical--a pre-spelled ring, for example, or something called a D-Hopper, which I still think is pretty cool. It's a rod, maybe a foot long, and with several dials along its length. Set the dials for your destination, press the button, and *ZAM* you're there.
The most-recent series I've really gotten into is Mercedes Lackey's "Valdemar." Her approach to magic is by far the most complex of the three, but there's only one way of using magic to get around (not including the levitated barges some of her characters use, since the barges are still pulled by horses or mules). We only ever see the one world--no parallel realities to speak of, unlike the other two authors' works.
A Gate is a quick, but energy-expensive, portal between two places. To cast a Gate, the mage must know their destination well enough to form a mental image of the place, and only the highest class of mage can summon and use the Power needed to invoke the Gate's spell and hold the construct open long enough to use it.
One really neat aspect of Lackey's approach is that magic energy affects the world around it--for example, opening a Gate can trigger spectacular and violent thunderstorms.
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