Seems like too many legends (or at least notable people) in the science fiction and fantasy genres have been passing into the next world all too often of late.
This time it's Robert Asprin whose greatest influence, for me, was the Thieves' World series. The only thing left to say is: Thank you, Mr. Asprin, for such a wonderful collection of stories. It held me enthralled many a night when I was a child.
In honor of Mr. Asprin, I'm re-posting my Thieve's World post taken from my old blog. Here you go:
Thieve's World
I read a lot when I was younger. Before college, before my first job back in California, before a move to Texas, a house & new job, marriage, dogs, another new job, realizing that I'm not getting any younger and if I really want to have a book published I better get on it... back when it seemed I had nothing but time (relative to how hectic life is now, anyway). I do still read, of course, just not as much. Where before it might have taken me a week or less to plow through a book, now it takes me 2-3 weeks if not longer.
Of those books I read when I was in my more formative years were such classics as Robert E. Howard's Conan series, Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Pyrdain, C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Terry Brooks's Shannara books, and, last but not least, the series which will always have an honored place on my bookshelf, the 12-book anthology known as Thieves' World.
Let's go back a little. The original Thieves' World series began in 1979 with the debut book generically named Thieves' World. Later anthologies came out about once/year (or more) and ran until 1989 when the series went on hiatus, which basically means the authors/creators/editors all (or singly) decided it was time to take a break and devote time to other projects. Thieves' World was a "shared-world" anthology, meaning multiple authors had a hand in its creation, evolution, and in its cast of characters. As you can imagine, when you throw in such authors as Lynn Abbey, Robert Asprin, David Drake, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Poul Anderson, C.J. Cherryh, and others, you've got something special and, more importantly, a playing field fit for some real competition. You see, the authors were continuously trying to one-up the other, pitting the characters they created against those created by the other authors. Theft, extortion, kidnapping, blackmail, torture... all of these things were allowed. The one thing that was not allowed, the "golden rule" as 
it were, was that no author could kill another author's characters. Barring that, anything goes, and did.
Thieve's World
was an inspiring series, both then and now. Lynn Abbey, you see, has started the series anew. The first book is Sanctuary, a novel length work that takes place many years after the heroes and villains of the original series are dead and gone or simply moved on. Most of them, anyway. As I read through Sanctuary, revisiting the city of the same name where much, if not all, of the storytelling takes place, I find myself longing to go back and re-read the first 12 books again. The Street of Red Lanterns, the Vulgar Unicorn, characters such as Shadowspawn, Tempus Thales, Molin Torchholder... by the gods, this is the stuff of legend! Imagine a boy first getting his glimpse of this wondrous place... a city where gods walked the streets, thieves and assassins plied their respective trades, priests, witches and hazard-mages met for a quiet drink or to do battle, the S'danzo read the future, and the walking dead ruled in a part of the city called The Shambles.
Now, the series continues with Sanctuary. Written by Lynn Abbey, who is one of the original editors and contributors of the series, Sanctuary is a novel that bridges the time-gap between those original 12 books and what appears to be a new shared-world series with multiple contributing authors. I won't say a whole lot about the novel Sanctuary right now other than that I like it. I'll save the rest for a future review.
Look at your own world in your fiction and see if you think you might invoke such nostalgia and wonder 10, 20, or even more years from now when some reader is reminded of your work. All too often fiction of all kinds comes and go's, forgotten as it falls out-of-print. Even the original Thieves' World books are out-of-print, though there is a movement to revive the series.
For now, though, if you don't own a previous run of those first 12 books and can't find them on eBay, you'll have to satisfy yourself with Sanctuary and the books that come after.
For more info about Thieves' World:
http://www.thievesworld.info/novels/12base.htm
http://www.lynnabbey.com/TW/thieves__world.htm