SUBVERSIVE FAIRY-TALE AND DELIGHTFUL METAFICTION (full review) In an ancient tavern called The Shaggy Dog, two naive islanders, Shorty and Nome, hear a tale too good to pass up: a princess besieged, a villainous prince, and treasure beyond imagining. What could possibly go wrong? But this is a fairy-tale that refuses to play by the rules. Dragons turn philosophical, flying pigs serve for transportation, and the would-be heroes find themselves embarrassingly late to their own legend. As Shorty and Nome fumble from one ironic mishap to the next, their greatest challenge might be the one question they forgot to ask: when? Entertaining, satirical, and brimming with wordplay and allusions -- from classic fairy tales to Thomas Aquinas -- The Seventh Circumstance is a delightful commentary on the art of storytelling itself. (The reviewer received a complimentary advance review copy of the book in print.)

A BOOK FOR TEENAGE GRAPHIC NOVEL FANS WITH CLASSICAL EDUCATIONS (abridged review) There is a tiny subgenre of the Fantasy book world that is peopled by scholars and nerds who just love this sort of thing. Unfortunately, experienced readers are looking for quality in everything, not just the writing style. The story is about the problem of naïvety, but experienced readers don’t want to spend time with people who are quite that stupid. Teenage graphic novel readers with little experience in the real and written world are quite happy with this level of sophistication, and a volume of a hundred pages or so is the perfect length for them. The two main characters are likely to appeal to that age group, as their thought processes are quite believable, and their dialogue is bang-on. In the final analysis, this book was written for two separate mutually exclusive audiences, so despite some very clever writing, I don’t know who to recommend it to.