The Shaver Mystery Book Seven from Armchair Fiction gives the reader another heady dose of those riotous Shaver stories. Some are directly connected to what has come before but others diverge quite a bit. All in all a decent batch.
"Invasion of the Mirco-Men" is another tale of Mulan Muton, though truth told he and his lovely impish mate Arl are mostly observers in this strange story of a kingdom brough low by an invasion of microscopic people who invade the brain and drain the will. These microscopic men are part of vast sub-atomic cultures which develop at lightning rates. A servant race called the Jotunds use this nano menace to take over the city of Nor and pillage it. The Jotunds are too stupid to do much with their victory and we follow how it was mostly doomed from the start.
"The Sea-Witch of Ether 18" is a tale of Nydia and Shaver himself, but once again they are in the role of observers. Apparently, it is possible to see other realities with the turn of a knob in these underground societies and Shaver does just that, turning to "18" and finding a vast undersea kingdom which has come under attack and depends on its queen who it turns out is a sorceress from another land. This is an unusually spiritual tale from Shaver, and a terribly tragic one as well.
"The Tale of the The Red Dwarf Who Writes with His Tail" is a very different kind of Shaver yarn. This one seems less connected to the overall Shaver Mystery and is more of a fanciful fairy tale of its own. A purple-skinned man named Druga goes off in search of wisdom to soothe his beloved and seeks out the Red Dwarf who sends him on a wild odyssey which lasts years and has our hero snuggled up to several femme fatales. Some prove worthier than others, but after much suffering of sundry kinds he does indeed find wisdom where he least expected to find it. This one is a lark and a story you can wrap up in quite nicely.
"A Dictionary of the Mantong Language" is exactly what it seems to be. I find little interest in Shaver's alphabet, though he and his editors seem fascinated.
"A Witch in the Night" is something between a short story and an essay of reflection which purports to explain how Shaver came to be inspired to search by the poetry of Byron, which cause him to be able to conjur visions of reluctant women in the night. Not much here in terms of actual narrative.
A wild hodge podge of material in this seventh volume, but fun. I read this one with a good deal of gusto. Only one more volume to go.
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