This is a book for readers who enjoy hair-raising and unpredictable events, massively
detailed worlds, witty and vivid
dialogue and strange discoveries.
There is also a mystery woven into the narrative. The tone is by turns
darkly funny, upbeat or hilarious.This effect is enhanced by the
author´s drawings. Moers has created a fabulous cast of characters
ranging from likeable to utterly evil. The protagonist is a dog-like
creature with horns who faces dangers at every turn and confronts them
head-on.
At the outset, our hero is still a puppy living on a farm run by
dwarfs. He
learns to walk on his hindlegs and becomes familiar with the
world of smells. In his mind´s eye he sees a silver thread in the sky
and intends to follow it one day.
To their horror, he and the dwarfs are captured by one-eyed
monsters
and stored in their larder, a big grotto, constantly in fear of being
eaten alive.
Our hero is growing teeth and becomes stronger every day. In a stinking
pond he discovers another prisoner, Smyke. Smyke is a
fourteen-armed
shark maggot who gives him the name of Rumo after a playing card. He
teaches himto talk and tells him all he has to know about
fighting,
turning him into a deadly weapon.
After a wild fighting sequence and their escape, the two of them meet a
gnome, Kolibril, who has four brains. He mind-melds with Smyke and
shows him a phe- nomenal discovery: a machine that is supposed to defeat
death.
After a while, they separate. Kolibril is on an expedition to
investigate a city said to be shrouded in living fog. Smyke goes on a
culinary journey in a wine-growing area. There he drinks a special wine that will reveal him the truth.
Rumo follows the silver thread to Wolperting, a
well-defended city of excellent fighters. It is the first time he meets
members of his own species and finds friends and foes among them. It is
also the first time he meets a member of the opposite sex:Rala, with
whom he falls in love.
At school he learns to read and write and takes fencing classes to
become an even better fighter. At first rather shy, he slowly gains
self-confidence.
One day, he returns from a quest to Wolperting only to find the city
deserted. In the search for his friends, Rumo learns that there is
another world below, eerie and dreadful, where alchimists control giant
monstrosities..
We enter the twisted minds of three grotesque characters: The insane king is
prone to flying into violent tempers and intends to establish his evil rule also on
the surface. His advisor, a sharp-witted schemer, hatches a plan to
usurp the throne. General Ticktock and his Copper Men, the ultimate
fighting machines, also enter Netherworld. Ticktock is a torturer with
no heart and a strange obsession with death.
When those terrible foes appear on the scene, all seems to be lost...