This was my first Asprin/Evans collaboration. Although the story's concept was interesting, I found myself trying to distinguish between what I thought Asprin's contribution was vs. Evans, which was a distraction to the actual reading of the book. The reason for this was because some parts were straight forward with little or no gushing hyperbole and hackneyed, adjectival description while other parts were downright trite, to the point the the writing difference from one scene to the next was noticeable. Most of the battle scenes were very straight forward while many of the scenes involving women sounded like something from a formulaic romance novel.This is not to say that the historic rendering and battle scenes were without their moments, either. There is a lot or repitition, in case the reader is not too savvy, I guess. For example, at one point in the big denouement, were are told there are three score and nine archers. In case you are not aware of a 'score' in the next paragraph the authors say there are sixty and nine..and again, a little farther down, nine and sixty!! Really?Just couldn't help wondering the whole time how the collaboration worked. DId anyone edit this? Does one person write and the other one rewrite? Hmmm........
Usually I connote Aspirin with very tongue in cheek material. His Myth and Phule series. Here, however, there is little tongue and cheek but a intrigue, adventure, and battle. A much different tale then we have seen before, but the premise begins a little off, and then later, it is hard to swallow as well, for we have time travel, but our main characters must do so into host bodies of the time and we meet a much different Lancelot and Morgan le Fey than we are used to in the tales of King Arthur.Here, Asprin and Evans combine the tale, with historical supposition to weave their intrigue with actual historical events thrown in to give us some meaning, as well as events that are created to seem historical in this telling of later Briton, early Saxon England.The sharing of hosts though seems very convenient when our true heroes of the tale enter and share the bodies of key people to the time and tale, while the villain enters a non-entity. The ending that tries to tie up some loose ends also leaves a little too pat to one interpretation of the legend trying to make it work becoming forced. But when we take things like that and put them aside and allow our hero to be part Lancelot and part himself, then we have a very fun yarn to take part of.
