Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone-and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra-can save them.
With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. Specific descriptions of characters seldom enter in, aside from one dark-skinned seer of ghosts and a scaled princess, but names that range from Fergus and João to Héctor and Zheng hint at some diversity in the cast.Ī properly peculiar collection from Riggs.Īdventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.Įlisa-Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle-has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. The tales all feature full-page illustrations that look like finely worked wood engravings and offer glimpses of realistically depicted figures, major incidents, and eerie details. Clever tweaks (“we have a modest proposal for you,” says a cannibal in the opener) abound, and endings are mostly happy. Later offerings include the origin of the first shape-changing Ymbryne, the story of an unloved lad who becomes a giant locust, and a tale of the long war between Londoners and pigeons over air rights.
These lead off with a cautionary episode in which villagers who can regenerate body parts grow rich by selling limbs to cannibals but ultimately let greed overwhelm their better judgement. Those impetuous enough to join peculiar readers in proceeding, however, will find a number of affecting adventures. In this special edition, fictive author Millard Nullings selects 10 tales from the many that have passed down through generations to instruct and inform those of the “peculiar persuasion.”Ī prefatory warning that the contents are “strange, depressing, and altogether not to your liking,” not to mention “none of your business,” will surely cause wiser “normals” to steer clear.
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