Always love to be back in the world of Gary Karkofsky a.k.a Merciless: The Supervillain without Mercy™. The Horror of Supervillainy starts off with Gary reading Harry Potter again (though he erases his memory of them so he can experience them for the first time all over again, and who wouldn’t do that, with so many great series if they had that ability?) when a talking raven shows up in his office. David, the talking raven, wants to hire Merciless to rescue the president’s daughter from Dracula.
Of course that isn’t as straightforward as it sounds, nothing with Gary and the gang is never what it seems. For one, there are many different universes and time isn’t always linear. Throughout this series, there are many different worlds Gary inhabits and the rules aren’t always the same. The same is true here and he is even in more than one world and in an area that is between worlds. This gives the author a lot of room to change things up, so something that happened before is able to be changed in future books. So someone can die in a previous book and be back to life here (hey, the way Phipps handles bringing a character back to life better than the fact that they gave Jedi’s healing powers that didn’t exist for the first eight movies).
So, not only does Gary basically have to not fall into the trap set for him, he again, has to save the world and his friends. Gary has gotten quite a few friends over the years. I really enjoyed Jane Doe (the weredeer from the Bright Falls Mysteries series) and Case/G (sentient robot from Agent G series), not to mention Cindy (Red Riding Hood from this series and Gary’s mistress and mother to one of his kids), Mandy (vampire also from this series and Gary’s wife??, are they still married if she’s dead, this is something that Gary ponders in the story).
Anyway, this story has everything I expect from a C.T. Phipps story. Fun characters that love to be snarky and throw out one-liners. More pop culture references than you can shake a stick at. But mostly, these stories are just fun to get lost in, which we all need after the past year of lockdown. Between the fun banter and the amazing narration, I really get lost in the story when I’m listening to the audiobooks. The stories aren’t deep, but they’re so enjoyable. I always look forward to my next book set in this universe (and there are many series that all live in this universe, each series can be read on their own or as part of the group, though I do recommend starting each series at the beginning, but I’m a stickler for that with every series). If you’re looking for a story to just have a good time with fun characters, this is a great series for that.
Narration:
Jeffrey Kafer really helps make this series what it is (I’ve never tried to read the books, only listened, so I can’t comment about how it is to read these). He really brings out all the characters personalities. Kafer has no problems with the large cast of male, female and even children in this series. I’ve never heard Kafer pick a voice that didn’t match the character perfectly. If you’ve never listened to him perform an audiobook, you’re really missing out.
**I received a free copy of this book and voluntarily chose to review it.