Utopian
7/13/2021
Walter Moers is scandolously little-known in Anglophone circles. His Zamonia novels, beginning with The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear are a riot of ideas and illustrations.
This novel is a sequel to The City of Dreaming Books and sees dinosaurian novelist Optimus Yarnspinner return to the book-obsessed city of Bookholm two hundred years after the first adventure.
If you haven't read the previous book or (like me) can't remember most of the details because it was too long ago, there is plenty of reminders in the text, including a vast (probably overlong) re-tread of the whole previous story.
To my mind this is the weakest of Moers books that I've read. It's a bit slow with very little in the way of plot. Instead we are treated to long exegeses on various elements of Bookholmian culture.
Now it may well be that this is the point and that Moers' is satirising a certain kind of excessive fictional worldbuilding. But it can often seem a bit dull.
If you're new to Zamonia, don't start here. Instead check out Bluebear or Rumo (probably the closest to a traditional fantasy narrative).
If you've enjoyed other Moers books then there is much to enjoy here, but don't expect the rapid-fire surge of ideas from the earlier books.