Know When to Run: Mission 1

Mirth & Mayhem #1

by J.S. Morin

"Let's just say I have pressing business anywhere but Earth."Chuck Ramsey is a traveling comedian trying to turn a planetside gig on Earth into a cash cow. Of course, the cost of living on Earth is astronomical. He needs to get rich quick—or at least come out ahead—and head for cheaper pastures.Enter Mordecai The Brown. Once the golden boy of the Convocation, Guardian of the Plundered Tomes and the Convocation's number one hunter of dark wizards, "Mort" has found himself on the wrong end of an internal investigation. You see, he was supposed to be killing mad wizard, then confiscating and locking up dangerous books—not reading them. Certainly not stealing them and destroying them.When Mort needs quick passage off world, and off the books, he remembers a backstage meet-and-greet with funny-man who lived a nomadic existence with his family. Chuck agrees to take a passenger aboard his family starship, the Radio City, and suddenly a powerful wizard owes a favor he can never repay.Little did either of them know the trouble that would follow.Know When to Run is the first mission of Black Mirth and Mayhem. It follows a mismatched duo of itinerant comedian and outlaw wizard as they roam the galaxy trying to eke out a living and stay ahead of the consequences of their actions. Black Mirth and Mayhem takes a look back at an earlier era in the Black Ocean universe, and returning readers will get to see how some of their favorite characters came to be. Fans of morally gray heroes and slick talking conmen will love this series.Grab your copy before someone else does.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Space Opera, Adventure

166 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 20, 2021

About the author

I am a creator of worlds and a destroyer of words. As a fantasy writer, my works range from traditional epics to futuristic fantasy with starships. I have worked as an unpaid Little League pitcher, a cashier, a student library aide, a factory grunt, a cubicle drone, and an engineer--there is some overlap in the last two.

Through it all, though, I was always a storyteller. Eventually I started writing books based on the stray stories in my head, and people kept telling me to write more of them. Now, that's all I do for a living.

I enjoy strategy, worldbuilding, and the fantasy author's privilege to make up words. I am a gamer, a joker, and a thinker of sideways thoughts. But I don't dance, can't sing, and my best artistic efforts fall short of your average notebook doodle. When you read my books, you are seeing me at my best.

My ultimate goal is to be both clever and right at the same time. I have it on good authority that I have yet to achieve it.

Reviews

[Frank Carver · Rating 5 out of 5]

A start of a whole new Black Ocean prequel series!

I’ll say at the outset that I am a big fan of J S Morin’s “Black Ocean” universe, which has now expanded into several loosely-connected series. I tend to recommend it a lot, and my usual suggestion is to start with the book where it all began: “Salvage Trouble”, the first of the “Galaxy Outlaws” series, which introduces the crew of the ship Mobius. With this new series, though, there is now an alternative jumping-on point.

The first thing any new reader needs to know about the Black Ocean universe is that it is good old space-opera scif-fi, but with a twist. You know all those classic sci-fi things that physicists complain about - faster than light travel, artificial gravity and so on? Morin has a neat answer for these. Magic. Not magic in Arthur C Clarke’s “sufficiently advanced technology” sense, but actual wizard, robe and staff magic.

In this setting, magic has always existed, but the worldview is inherently incompatible with science and technology. Magic works by using force of will to bend the rules of the universe so that something previously thought impossible can become possible. The trouble with this is that all those technological gadgets we rely on for our daily lives need the rules of the universe to stay constant in order to function. Around magic, technology stops working or malfunctions, and around too many technologists, all believing that the world is exactly as it appears, most people can’t do magic.

Luckily, some people are powerful and well-trained enough to use this ability to bend the universe, but the better you get at magic, the harder it is to use any kind of delicate technology at all. Asking for a wizard’s thumbprint to confirm a purchase is likely to crash the whole payment system.

“Mirth and Mayhem” is a prequel series, set years before the events of “Salvage Trouble”, and follows the wizard Mordecai The Brown (known as Mort to his friends) as he gets into trouble with the Convocation, the all-powerful organisation of wizards, and has to flee for his life. He falls in with itinerant comedian and hustler Chuck Ramsey and his family when he needs passage off earth and that’s when the adventure really begins.

The great thing about Morin’s Black Ocean universe is that it all seems so logical. Once you allow the basic idea of magic and technology in an uneasy coexistence, the rest follows. Spaceships travel in astral space in order to beat the speed of light, but risk the failure of high-tech life support if things go wrong. Terraforming is done by teams of specialised magicians. Wizards politely hide their hands in their sleeves to show they are not about to perform magical gestures. Everything is both consistent and interesting, and the scope for compelling stories is endless.

Now I can’t wait for the rest of this series.

[Dale Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nebuchadnezzar the Brown's second to last request to his grandson Mordecai was problematic at best. Yet Mordecai...known to his friends as Mort...while hesitant eventually succumbed and did as he was bade thus changing his life forever.

Chuck Ramsey, on the other hand, was simply looking for a way to get back into space...preferably WITHOUT paying the incredible dock and repair fees that the Earth was so famous for.

But...call it fate...call it destiny --- More likely call it KARMA --- the two soon found themselves in a position to help the other.

And the BLACK OCEAN would NEVER be the same...

With three tremendously successful series of stories set in the universe (galaxy really) of the BLACK OCEAN, author J.S. Morin is not one to fall back on his laurels and so blasted into a fourth series that acts as a prequel to all the rest.

Taking an earlier STOWAWAY story GUARDIAN OF THE PLUNDERED TOMES --- story 4.5 in the original BLACK OCEAN set of adventures, Morin took the brief set of background facts introduced in that short journey and turned it into the opening salvo of what looks to be another hit series for his readers.

Jeff has always had a deft hand at world building but, perhaps, his strongest talent lies in the characters he creates and the natural emotional growth and changes that he puts them through that brings them --- has BROUGHT them --- to be the family of heroes and villains and those in-between that his readers can't get enough of.

This first book KNOW WHEN TO RUN is a perfect example as we see...

A Mort not so jaded with the world and who is just at the beginning of being a hunted target...
A Chuck who, while even then playing the angles, hasn't become the controlling father and conman he will become...
And a young Bradley Carlin Ramsey who is fresh into his maturation as the ultimate con-artist yet truly family oriented man he will become.

Welcome to the world of MIRTH & MAYHEM and the reason behind everything you've read up to this point. New readers as well as old will find this a great place to jump into...or return to...the depths of the BLACK OCEAN.

[Regina · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you ever wondered how a certain grumpy "old" wizard ended up with the Ramseys, here's your answer. Or if you simply want more stories with said grumpy wizard, here you go!
And if this first story in the new prequel series sounds familiar, it is because part of it has previously been published in the short story "Guardian of the Plundered Tomes". "Know When to Run" builds on that and shows in much greater detail what can happen when you add a fugitive of the magic persuasion to your family.

As always, I'm here for all the Mort (Promethean Fire included), all the banter, and all the Ramsey shenanigans. Bring it on!

[Derek Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great backstory on some of the most entertaining, and conflict compelling characters in the story. You finally get to know how they meet and how that will turn out to create the relationship we see in the original series.

[John Willson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chuck Ramsey is a passable comedian, and a half-decent scam artist, and a hopeless optimist with a broken-down starship. Mort The Brown is perhaps the most powerful wizard alive today, and he just became the Convocation's most wanted. What happens when these two cross paths? Mirth and mayhem, for starters!

At last! More Black Ocean books are flowing from Jeff Morin's talented fingers! This time around, we will be treated to a series of prequels revealing how the oddball characters from his main Black Ocean series came to be scamming their way across the galaxy together.

In this volume, we get to know the wizard Mort, and see his first encounter with that damned tome of forbidden knowledge that set him on the path of the outlaw. We also meet Chuck Ramsey and family. Chuck is a lovable rogue with a tarnished heart of gold who bears more than a passing family resemblance to Carl Ramsey, the captain of the Mobius. In fact, Carl is Chuck's son, and is present as an impressionable young secondary character in the present tale. Clearly Carl will take after his father, but this all makes me wonder: how old is Mort, anyway?? And does he later indulge in a little anti-aging magic? (I mean, who wouldn't?)

If you haven't read the Black Ocean series, you're in for a treat; start with Mission Pack 1: Galaxy Outlaws. But this book would be a good starting point too, being a prequel to all that. If you like action-comedy chocolate in your space-opera peanut-butter, a little magic in your sci-fi, then Know When To Run is right in your star-faring wheelhouse.

[Brett Wickersham · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have read any of the previous Black Ocean series (Galaxy Outlaws, Astral Prime, Mercy for Hire), you are aware there is some MAJOR history between some of the characters. This story, is the first book in the Mirth and Mayhem series, which is a prequel to the three afore mentioned series, and a look into a lot of that history. This first installment shows us the fall from grace of everyone's favorite semi psychotic wizard Mortal, and how he came across and into the lives of the Ramsey clan. What ensues is a great look at the early days of some well known and loved characters. If you are familiar with the subsequent series you know some of what to expect, and what is to come. However, you are lucky enough that all this backstory is another look into a well crafted and thought out universe. I will definitely be looking forward to the coming installments

[Lucas Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review of Black Ocean: Mirth and Mayhem Book 1 - Know When to Run
By someone who forgot just how good Morin is at making space criminals loveable

It’s been a year or two since I rocketed through Galaxy Outlaws, and like a fool who forgot how good real espresso tastes after drinking gas station sludge, I’d somehow let the brilliance of J.S. Morin slip out of my memory. Shame on me. Because diving into Know When to Run—book one of Mirth and Mayhem—was like discovering the origin story of your favorite dive bar: gritty, a little sketchy, and packed with exactly the kind of twisted charm that makes you never want to leave.

Let’s talk about Mordecai the same way people talk about fine wine or illegal cheese—because the man is a damn delicacy. If you’ve read Galaxy Outlaws, you know him as the ship’s wizard, the morally flexible conjurer with a knack for magic and chaos. But seeing him here, in his earlier, scrappier form? It’s like watching a lovable stray cat pull off a diamond heist. He’s clever, snarky, a bit of a disaster—but he’s our disaster, dammit. A con artist with a staff, a thief with an ego, and somehow, against all odds, someone you’d want to trust when things go sideways... or at least when there’s profit involved.

This isn’t your average space opera. This is heist fiction in a wizard’s bathrobe, equal parts laugh-out-loud funny and “oh crap” tension. There’s a rhythm to Morin’s writing, the action moves fast, the dialogue snaps like a hot wok, and the characters? Let’s just say they’re the kind of people you’d absolutely follow into a bar fight… just probably not out of one.

If Galaxy Outlaws was the main course, Know When to Run is that spicy, forbidden appetizer you weren’t sure about ordering but now can’t stop eating. It’s messy, brilliant, morally questionable, and totally addictive.

Mordecai’s back, baby—and watching him rise from magical grifter to galactic legend is the kind of joy I didn’t know I needed.

[Marc Yergin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the 1960s there was a tv show, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, about a flying squirrel and a somewhat dimwitted moose. One of the more popular segments was Mr Peabody anhd his sidekick Sherman. They travelled through time with their “wayback machine,” and created chaos where ever they stopped. Each segment ended with a pun.
Jeff Morin must have used a wayback machine to take us back to when Mordecai the Brown and Chuck Ramsey met and began their association. Mort was one of the most powerful and deadly wizards who the Convocation wants to knock off because he has read a prohibited book that has given him even more wizardly power. Chuck is a scamp and a grifter. He always has something going to the frustration of his family.
Know When to Run is the first book in a new series about the Black Ocean, Mirth & Mayhem. To readers not familiar with the Black Ocean this first book in the new series is a welcome addition that introduces us to two of the founding characters.
Needless to say, before things get off the ground Mort has to use his powers to help Chuck but not alturistically. As always, it is a means to an end.
There is a moral here. If you are a wizard be careful what you read and if you are a grifter be careful who you grift. The only thing this story doesn’t do is stop Mort from being a pie romancer.

[The Mysterious Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magic, sci-fi, complex stories in the perfect setting of the wildest of frontiers. J.S. Morin’s Black Ocean is all of that, and it’s all bern truly fantastic over the course of several different yet linked series (each separately reviewed; all 5-star worthy in different ways and capable of being read standalone). So now we come to Know When to Run: Mission 1 (Black Ocean: Mirth & Mayhem), a new series which works as a great story that can standalone perfectly for those unfamiliar with this author and yet, at the same time is catnip fro series of Morin’s books as it’s also a prequel tale (start of a prequel series) for three of the standalone Black Ocean series, Galaxy Outlaws, Mercy for Hire, and Astral Prime, starring characters that fan series probably recall as fondly as I do. For Star Wars fans this is the equivalent of Rogue One, a great, really superb, film in itself which blew your mind with how it fit as a prequel take into the overarching Star Wars films. Same thing here (including the “great, really superb” part) and this really easy to highly recommend to both newcomers and longtime fans.

[Tetra · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got the entire Mirth and Mayhem bundle from Audible. Morin at his best is excellent, he’s created a fantastic universe that is very original. Often very humorous I’m usually a big fan but not for this series. The Ramsey’s are low lives and I just didn’t like them which is a problem since they are an integral part of the series.

One of the kids goes from Michael to Rochelle, wtf is wrong with Morin. A kid likes dancing so must be trans….there seems to be no such thing as a tomboy or an effeminate boy. Apparently children who do not conform to gender stereotypes must in the wrong body….gays are being transed out of existence. I was exceedingly annoyed that Morin has bought into this insanity and it’s what caused me to just give up.

The only saving grace for me was Mordecai the Brown. Sure he’s a maniacal killer, but always interesting…..the Ramsey’s not so much. It was all so predictable, Brad with endless teenage angst, Beckie the worst mother in the world, Chuck, a largely inept thief…… but he’s a second rate comedian so it’s all good.

Dnf

[Agna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Traveling comedian Chuck Ramsey uses his charm as a small-time swindler to fund the nomadic lifestyle of his family aboard their starship, the Radio City. But when their ship breaks down on earth, and no amount of hustling can pay for the repairs, Chuck and his family are stuck on a planet where life is astronomically expensive.
Thankfully, at that same moment, powerful wizard Mordecai The Brown needs to go underground asap after messing up big time. So both men strike a deal: Mort will provide power for the starship, in return for a one-way ticket off the planet.
Know When to Run is the start of a prequel series for the Black Ocean series – which I haven’t read yet. But this story is an entertaining and well-written mix of science fiction, magic and adventure. So I’m really looking forward to discovering more!
I received a preview copy of this book which I am voluntarily reviewing.

[Karl Hakimian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Far too often, prequels seem forced or the characters too fully developed toward the latter end of the novels that come later. In this book, Morin managed to avoid those pitfalls and provided not only a very entertaining read, but a believable regression of Mort to who he was before the later (in time books). While Mort wouldn't be Mort if he were not obnoxious, arrogant and very powerful, he was portrayed as far less sure of himself than he becomes later in life.

It's also fun to see Carl (Bradley) at such a young age. Kind of explains a lot. This should be a fun series.

[Joe Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun book rather than a great book, so this is more an I liked it rating than anything else. The characters are interesting and I've always found the classic days of vaudeville and such to be an enjoyable read so the comedian character fits right into that interest. Meanwhile the idea of magic in a tch world is also fascinating, so another good fit.
All that said the plot is very low key, it is something of a short story stuff into a novel. Some authors have a knack for entertainingly saying almost nothing, is that a gift or a curse?

[Schvenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The final saga of Black Ocean starts with Chuck as a teenager onboard his parent's ship just as Mordecai joins the crew. With a return to the lighter side of science fiction and comedy, I suspect this saga will be more along the lines of the first series. One point of interest though, is that part of the first book appears word for word, but slightly expanded upon on of the short stories the authour told us during the first series.

[Faith Hakimian · Rating 5 out of 5]

YES

Aww, man. I missed Mort, so it was great to read about him again. And kid Carl! The characters in this are fantastic, despite the fact that this is a prequel and prequels are hard to do well, there's easily enough that we don't know and enough characters that I love reading about that this is going to be a whole lot of fun.

[Arnis · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://poseidons99.wordpress.com/202...

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part of the Black Ocean universe. A good hearted mercenary does good.

[Sabion · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun adventure with wizards and space. As a stand alone book it lacks in details but as an introduction to the world of techno wizardry it succeeds.

[Kevin Huff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh love a good origin story. How mort got into this whole situation and got hooked up with Carl.

[Rebee · Rating 2 out of 5]

The wizard didn't act like the kind of person who would do the things he did in the book. And the conman is pretty unlikable.

Maybe I'll give this series another shot... maybe not.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

[John W Finnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

More Mort

This is the story of how Mort meets Brad and why. The only thing missing from this is the next book.

[Kenny Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

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