Not for all tastes by a long shot, but if the University of Chicago Library/Oriental Institute setting, academic and anti-government bureaucracy humor, Greek (plus an excursion to Egyptian) myth and legend, sprinkled with stupid puns (not too many of them, thankfully) are your kalyx of wine, you'll find this goes down easy.
The human characters are silly twists on stock characters (but the ethnic diversity riffs are deftly handled): The genius physicist administrator with more security clearance than God, the fearless South African marine biologist Amazon, the dweeby-but-brilliant Middle Eastern mythology professor, his punny autodidact friend the South Side maintenance man (and his foul-mouthed, take-no-shit wife), the no-BS 101st Airborne NCO and a young farm-boy recruit, a stream of incompetent and self-serving government bureaucrats (who share baddy roles with the handwavium alien AI behind it all). Even the walk-on characters (e.g., the Manager of the Luxor) are better than they have to be.
But it's the legendary and mythological characters that raise this silly romp a whole level: the Olympians are baddies, but the Titans (Prometheus & Typheon) and the obscure Egyptian God, Bes, become allies. Arachne the spider woman is a sympathetic love interest with some nice (Colophon the timocracy) twists, and the Sphinx is funny/scary and the machina of the plot. But the show is stolen by Medea and her toothless baggy-pants idiots savant dragon duo (Bitar and Smitar), the best wacky riffs on Greek legend I've ever read.
- File Size: 941 KB
- Print Length: 503 pages
- Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
- Publisher: Baen Books; 1 edition (July 27, 2015)
- Publication Date: July 27, 2015
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B012TXYOOI
- Text-to-Speech:
Enabled
- Word Wise: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#651,097 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #30855 in Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #52431 in Science Fiction (Books)
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