Google is Great! I just stumbled across this thread, and wanted to mention how much I appreciate being the subject of discussion. Cardo, thanks for downloading the first book; I hope you find it worth the bandwidth.
KatG, I think the series description you quoted:
It is a comic fantasy series starring Maximillian the Vaguely Disreputable, who with his pals deals with klutzy, warring factions of gods, magic objects, power politics, spies and eventually, a possible apocalypse. It is extremely high action and has been compared to the Man from Uncle with spells, or rather magicians who try to invoke spells and get properly beaned with a cast iron frying pan before they can finish.
is a pretty good illustration of the categorization problem these books have always had. Personally, I think the "comic fantasy" tag has had unfortunate undertow; while some of the dialogue, in particular, has a certain Marx Brothers or P.G.Wodehouse element to it, the books aren't pun-filled laugh riots by any means. I'd call the tone more akin to middle or late Terry Pratchett, perhaps; he's a much more miraculous writer, of course, but even while he's setting out matters of consequence and dark doings, there is a certainly lightness of authorial touch rather than a revel in the gore, and characters who often refuse to take their predicaments too seriously.
Another categorization issue was the increasing importance of some of the SF-adjacent elements as the series went on. The interface between conjuration and cellular nanotechnology was one example, and the network-based virtual world stuff was another.
In any case, material that was, perhaps, out of step with reader expectations fifteen or twenty years ago, and was clearly very challenging for DAW to package.
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Originally Posted by Hobbit
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