Review: Light reading fine entertainment for the afternoon
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 16, 2014
Tritium Gambit (Max and Miranda) By Erik HyrkasI've said it before and I'll continue saying that humor is subjective and so are novels like this when they are slathered in it. This one also contains a lot of pop references. And the novel itself reads like a redo of Men in Black movies. Add in a little Buckaroo Banzi and Howard the Duck.The plot if fairly simple; Max and Miranda are the two loose cannons of the Intergalactic Secret Service. They hunt down aliens that land on earth with the intent of causing havoc. They are both in visiting their injured partners and are about to be assigned together because some desk jockey thinks they might just finish each other off.Captain Johnson is their commander and  Wendy is their mission coordinator. And before they can leave the ground they pick up one more member to the team, Tyler, an old acquaintance of Max. Max is not excited about any of this because he'd rather work alone.The Agent are all non-human or part human with special abilities that help in their work to secure Earths blissfulness at being unaware of alien influences.The story contains a lot of references to actors and singers and movies and other pop references as it goes along. The characters wear tee shirts with some sort of pop references.I could have probably given this an easy five star had the characters engaged me just a bit more than they did. I'm not exactly sure why I couldn't get into them enough to really care about what happened to them. If they'd captured my attention it would have made up for some of the uneasiness I felt with the plot. The humor again is subjective and I could catch most of it but sometimes I wasn't sure. There is a place half way through the novel when I feel like it enters some really poorly constructed MMORPG when Max, who has extra life and health, has to go on a quest to acquire 100 special snakes in order to get enough fuel to get them back to Earth.Overall it was interesting though. And Max is nearly indestructible what with having four hearts and all. Although he could die he still is almost the perfect indestructible character whose only flaw seems to be that he gets all of his partners injured; sometimes fatally.It's a fun read SFF mostly fantasy that stretches your limits with suspension of reality. If you can catch the pop references and the humor it will add to the enjoyment. (one small spoiler::) It all comes to a satisfactory conclusion leaving room for you to decide when you want to pick up the next installment of the adventures of Max and Miranda.J.L. Dobias