I’ve been eating up this series from the first book, so I jumped at an opportunity to review the audiobook. Here’s the disclaimer: I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review. I didn’t expect to see a book 5 because I thought book 4 had wrapped up Gary’s tales. Nice to see I was wrong.
Here’s the deal about this story: Gary and crew (Cindy, Mandy, Diabloman, Gabrielle and others) from the previous books are back. This is almost a reboot of the series, or it’s the place where the author finds his mojo again. As fun as superhero/supervillain tales can be, they can be a drain on creativity. So Phipps spins it in a new direction with this salute to Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and games of that sort.
We get the same intelligence, irreverence and cleverness that we’ve known in the previous books of the series, but here it’s an everything goes in the multi-verse type thing. Basically, Phipps brings in characters from other book series he’s written that are completely unrelated to this story and lets them play here. It works so well that now I want to get my ears on the Agent G and Jane Doe series. (A were-deer. Seriously? Turns out she’s cool!)
Jeffrey Kafer’s performance was as great as ever. He’s a hard-working narrator with lots of titles I’ve enjoyed. Some of my favorite voices of his are Cindy’s and Diabloman’s. Even though he’s got a vast audiography, he excels with scifi/fantasy titles.
Bottom line: A good story to start fresh with Gary/Merciless, but I do recommend going back to the beginning. The other books are just fun. For those who love their leads witty and snarky and who don’t mind their bad guys doing good. This is why Gary is the best anti-villain.
Looking forward to book 6.