The Twits Chronicles series follows the adventures of Cyril Chippington-Smythe and his mechanical valet, Bentley, as they navigate a dystopian world in search of love and meaning. Anthology #1 contains the full text of: Twits in Love, Twits in Peril and Twits Abroad plus two previously unpublished short stories. "The best satire is hilarious and engaging even to one who is not familiar with the antecedent. I have never read Wodehouse, whose work is elegantly and brilliantly roasted here by Mr. Robbins, but I don't need to. Twits is comic genius in its own right. I believe it is brilliant enough to belong to that rare category of literature, like Don Quixote, in which the satire is better known than the genre on which it is based.
It would be a disservice, in fact, to limit Twits to the category of satire. It is humor fiction entirely in its own shelf, "steampunk" notwithstanding. Mr. Robbins' world inhabits the past, present and future simultaneously. The current and urgent theme of economic inequality is present on every page, and the vividness and completeness of the characters is on a par with the those of the greatest comic authors.
Which brings me to the novel's central character, the endlessly appealing Cyril Chippington-Smythe. One of the great achievements of the story's structure, is that Cyril is both emblematic of everything that is ridiculous about his upper crust milieu, and also entirely free of any of its twitty residue. Even when recovering from a boozy night, Cyril is unfailingly fresh as as a daisy. He belongs, with Jack Worthing, to that family of literary heroes who are never made dull by the decadence of the world they inhabit. One wants to be his best friend, and to meet him for tea every afternoon.
Try Twits. Like a really good chocolate mousse, you won't feel full, and you'll order another immediately." William Youmans, Amazon Reviewer
