The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Mytho series, by T.J. Nichols (book one, Lust and other drugs, and two, Greed and other dangers, reviewed separately)
3: Envy and other cravings
4: Vanity and other monsters
5: Sloth and other delights
6: Wrath and other troubles
7: Gluttony and other hungers
8: Ogres and other dating dilemmas (Sean and Troy)
9 (novella): Weddings and other one-night stands (Mason and Vlash)

This imaginative and entertaining series focuses on two men (or “men”) brought together under difficult circumstances in a world rocked by change. Edra Tendric is a lesser dragon—a human-sized creature who shifts into human form. Jordan Kells is a police detective, who fled to San Francisco to escape an abusive family and find his own way.

Each of the first seven books is titled after the Seven Deadly Sins (although, frankly, they’re not entirely satisfying in the way they tie into the plots of the books). That is a small matter, since Nichols has created a richly imagined world in which the San Francisco we know has been transformed by the collapse of the Mythological World into our reality.

Each one of the books moves the complicated mating of Edra and Jordan further along, while introducing another, fascinating and/or disturbing element of the new reality as a driver of the narrative. These first seven books deal with the conflict between the people of San Francisco and the often fraught ways in which they—and the entire world—deal with the ten-year-old presence of mythological creatures in their midst. Culture clashes, and what amounts to racial profiling and prejudice about, and it falls to Jordan and Edra, shored up by their love for one another (which is both magical and more than magical) to act as go-betweens.

For all the absurdly crazy premise of the series, Nichols does a fantastic job of engaging the reader with their characters and with the increasingly high-tension plot twists. They are super with details, physical and emotional, and the writing is consistently good.

The last two books include a novel that recaps one of the subplots—a romance between Jordan’s friend Sean and one a young ogre, Troy, who is struggling with his own identity; and then a novella that focuses on a elf and yet another of Jordan’s friends, Mason, who meet at a wedding.

I loved this whole series and give it top marks.