Ally tells us about the wonder of Walter Moers, an in-between author.
Calling all teen readers with ridiculous vocabularies and reading ages at least a decade above their chronological age.
There’s a stage you get to, when you’re not quite ready for the world of adult books, where the characters have no happy ending, the good guy gets put on death row even though it wasn’t his fault his daddy never gave him enough attention, and there is explicit mention of S-E-X… But, at the same time, you’ve read Harry Potter for the 9th time: the magic is starting to wear a little thin, and you start to question why they killed off all the coolest characters at the end. Point is, there’s a gap in the middle between fantasy land and harsh adult reality (which isn’t really filled by adult sci-fi, because its either depressingly post apocalyptic, or the female characters never have enough balls to satisfy feminist readers).
That gap has been filled by epic German novelist, Walter Moers. Moers has written several novels. Most are set in a fantasy world known as Zamonia. Zamonia is filled with characters such as Troglotrolls, Wolpertigs, and Bollogs. All are given long-winded descriptions in footnotes from the Dictionary of Zamonia. For example “Troglotroll, The. Distantly related to thecommon Gnomelet, the Troglotroll can claim to be the most despised creature in Zamonia… Whereas other malignant life forms are at least distinguished by their audacity or demand respect on account of their physical superiority, the Troglotroll possesses no laudable attributes at all; worse still, it doesn’t even pretend to any, and rejoices in its obnoxiousness” (Does this also sound like the perfect description of anyone else’s ex?).
The 13 ½ lives of Captain Bluebear is perhaps the best introduction to Zamonia, and my favourite of the lot. It follows a blue bear (suprising, I know) around his travels of Zamonia, where he encounters many strange beasts, starting off sailing in a walnut shell with minipirates, and of course at the end defeats the bad guy (who happens to be a brain controlling a massive boat- don’t ask, just read.) and gets the girl. What more could you ask for? This book and ‘Rumo’ are standalones. He has also written a series starting with ‘The City of Dreaming Books’, similarly wacky.
Start reading if you’re sick of Ron and Harry’s bromance, but could have had more detail about Hagrid’s semi-legal trade in magical creatures. Also should be attempted by brave adults, and anyone who is sick of novels resembling anything vaguely resembling reality.
