If you like the "Rogue Angel" books, it may (or may not, admittely
) interest you to know that there is no such person as Alex Archer. Rather, the series has two principal authors, Mel Odom and Victor Milan, who have written about half the instalments published so far. The other half was written by a handful of others, some as one-offs, some as recurring members of the writing team. The name on the cover is just a pseudonym shared by all of them; for commercial reasons, I presume.
I recently managed to find a full listing of the actual authors and incorporated that information into the
'pedia entry for the title.
In my opinion, the series tends to significantly fluctuate in quality, especially lately. Some episodes very successfully implement the original formula: A genuine archaeological/crypto-scientific/folkloric/historical/mythological artifact/creature/mystery, wrapped in a rollicking adventure with healthy doses of awesome and sex, featuring recognizable protagonists and mustache-twirling antagonists. Others are, to put it bluntly, lame.
I've been trying to figure out if those (subjective) fluctuations in quality coincide with actual authorship, which seems a likelier explanation than that many or all of the authors produce books which are that wildly hit-and-miss. In some cases, that seems to be the case. For instance, the recent episodes "
Magic Lantern" and "
Third Caliph" were quite excellent, I thought, and as it turns out those mark the return of co-creator Odom after a lengthy hiatus. Conversely, I found the recent "
Labyrinth" truly awful, and all of the earlier episodes by the author responsible for that fiasco, Jon Merz, were forgettable at best and memorably flawed at worst, including the early "
Soul Stealer", which as I recall at the time hardly felt like part of the same universe as all the previous books.
In other cases, though, I liked some episodes by a given author but disliked others, or plain can't remember enough of them to render an informed verdict, which I guess means in itself that they were mostly middle-of-the-road, as quality goes.
I'd be interested to hear how other regular listeners (or readers) regard all this!
