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Der Schrecksenmeister

(Zamonien #5)

Walter Moers

4.18 · Rating details · 6,119 ratings · 294 reviews

In Sledwaya, der Stadt, in der »das Gesunde krank und das Kranke gesund« ist, spielt der neue Roman des zamonischen Großschriftstellers Hildegunst von Mythenmetz. Er handelt von der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Echo, dem hochbegabten Krätzchen, und Succubius Eißpin, dem furchtbaren Schrecksenmeister Sledwayas, der Faust und Mephisto in einer Person zu verkörpern scheint. Di ...more

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Hardcover, 383 pages

Published August 31st 2007 by Piper

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May 23, 2017 Michael rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: five-star-books, favourites, best-of-2017

Postponing everything bar work can only mean one thing, another Walter Moers book needs a reading. Nobody does comic fantasy better, and this is something that is cemented again in what is the fourth book set in the Zamonia world.

This series has always been about adventure, as different memorable characters take in the length and breadth of this amazing island continent. However, in this installment, we break the mold in the sickest city in the land, Malaisea. Here resident live in fear of the A ...more

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Nov 13, 2009 Lydia Presley rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, fantasy

The back of this book has a review by the New York Times Book Review with the words "Cheerfully insane..."

When I started this story I just didn't know if I could get into it. Walter Moers imagination is off the charts - it felt like I was being sat down and told a fairy tale with names being made up left and right. But then.. I was introduced to Anguish Candles.

Not normal candles, mind you - these candles suffer when they burn.. and they inch along..and they moan. And they are never put out of t ...more

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Jan 29, 2010 Joshua rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Another winner by Walter Moers! This book follows Echo the Crat (a cat that can speak all creature's languages) as he is saved from starvation by the Alchemaster, Ghoolion. Ghoolion's proposal is to treat Echo to the most amazing culinary treats in order to fatten him up to then, well end his life to take his fat.

Not only does Echo find out a lot about Ghoolion and his love(s) but also about the inhabitants of Ghoolion's castle and the secrets of the house itself. His (one-month) life's mission ...more

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Dec 14, 2011 Cyrus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Giving this a pre-emptive 5 stars, though I am not done yet. Reviews call this a "children's book for adults," and I don't think that's too far from the truth. What makes it "adult" is not large-scale political troubles or the horrors of the human condition a la The Guy Who Wrote Wicked and Other Stuff I Don't Particularly Care For, but a willingness to go to places the Brothers Grimm might go, and the modern fortitude to make fun of their absurdity.

It's the sort of thing I'd love to read out l ...more

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Sep 03, 2015 Sylvester rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-sci-fi, favorites, 2015

I was walking slowly through the Fantasy stacks at my favorite library, caressing the spines of the Walter Moers as I came to them, when I stopped in surprise and nearly fell over myself trying to snatch this book off the shelf before anyone else could. You see, not enough of Moers' books have been translated, in my opinion, and I have been bemoaning that fact since the last of his that I read - SO!! Joy! Joy! This was a bonus I hadn't expected.

And I was not disappointed. I loved the Crat.

Moers ...more

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Feb 05, 2016 Kät rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2016

4.5 but so deserved. one of my favourites of walter moers' work tbh.
im actually writing my thesis on this one and feel so glad that i did like it and wont have to write 12 pages about a book i cant stand...;)
review coming up soon, im just a bit too busy to keep up with all the reviews i want/have to write. ...more

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Jun 12, 2020 David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

An almost-literal feast for fantasy lovers!

Some years back, I read two books by Walter Moers: 'The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear' and 'The City of Dreaming Books' - both of them long and involved books, as I recall, and I enjoyed them immensely. To be honest, my reading tastes don't particularly run towards fantasy but I discovered there's something about the sensibility of Moers' work that appeals to me. He doesn't write for children but he does write for certain adolescents, and he definite An almost-literal feast for fantasy lovers!

Some years back, I read two books by Walter Moers: 'The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear' and 'The City of Dreaming Books' - both of them long and involved books, as I recall, and I enjoyed them immensely. To be honest, my reading tastes don't particularly run towards fantasy but I discovered there's something about the sensibility of Moers' work that appeals to me. He doesn't write for children but he does write for certain adolescents, and he definitely writes for adults. It seems that, if I'm going to read fantasy, it needs to have a certain... angle. Or, shall we say, 'bent'.

I'm not sure I could give a fair or adequate synopsis of 'TAA' - in fact, trying might prove a disservice. There are non-stop delights in store for the reader and I wouldn't want to spoil them. The title had put me in mind of Disney's 'Fantasia'; the memorable sequence involving Mickey Mouse going way overboard and wayward with a master sorcerer's power. (All those brooms! All that water!) But there is only the smallest vestige of that in 'TAA'.

Simply put, it is the story of Echo, a Crat (an advanced cat-creature who speaks all languages and can retain the world of knowledge without necessarily understanding all that he retains). As the story opens, Echo has just lost his home and is hungry. It is in this state that he meets Ghoolion, the feared Alchemaster who holds sway over the entire town of Zamonia, the story's setting. The two strike a bargain since there is something the Alchemaster needs for his current experiment: Echo's fat.

In one sense, Ghoolion resembles the silent sorcerer of the Disney film: he is fierce and intimidating. But he's much more than that. Moers' depiction of the wizard is (to put it mildly) a complex one - but, then, it's a complex book; complex in the sense of the seemingly endless amounts of invention and complication.

I tend to read fast - but Moers seemed to be regularly 'telling' me to slow down. I often had to put the book down in order to absorb / savor chapters I had just read. Almost every chapter is relatively short - yet, remarkably, each one is somehow full in scope and I often needed to just sit back and ruminate on what I'd just read. (~ which explains my opening remark about the 'feast', although that's a dual reference; there is certainly a whole lot of rich detail about food!)

Of particular importance - and delight - is the book's conclusion; among the most intricate conclusions I've ever read. Normally, a story of this type is likely to build to a single, cataclysmic climax... but not 'TAA'; its extensive wrap-up - at times, marvelously clever - is full of 'gotcha' moments that spiral the reader along.

Having just read Edward Sorel's wonderful book about the life of Mary Astor, I was pleased to fall into another work for which the author did his own illustrations. Even if Sorel's drawings appeal more to me personally, Moers is a fine illustrator - with a sharp sense of the macabre. However, though Sorel is also a fantasist (in a sense), Moers' imagination seems limitless. He leaps off into areas that are as mind-bending as they are unexpected.

He's also quite funny - which becomes more apparent in the second half of this book. The darkness of this novel would, at some point, become overwhelming if it weren't for the judicious, periodic inclusion of humorous whimsy. Characters come out with hysterical throwaway lines at just the right moments.

By now, I'm a real Moers fan. He has a few more novels waiting for me. I'll take a break for now... but I'll be ready to return before long. ...more

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Jan 18, 2021 Nilanjana Haldar rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

One of the most creative authors and most creative books I have ever come by!

9 years have passed and yet the memories of it delight me to the core.
I don't really know how to describe the beauty of this book so the review has to be this brief!

_ _ _ _ _ _

(When overwhelm of admiration floods your mind, words cease to appease) :)

...more

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Aug 14, 2015 Mike rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Since Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures featured a protagonist that was (essentially) a sentient dog, it feels entirely appropriate that Moers wrote a book that stars (essentially) a sentient cat as well.

Technically, Echo is a Crat, not a cat, which basically means a cat that has the ability to understand and speak languages. But make no mistake: this is the first novel I’ve read where the protagonist was a cat, and it was everything I could have wished for in that respect. This was helped along Since Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures featured a protagonist that was (essentially) a sentient dog, it feels entirely appropriate that Moers wrote a book that stars (essentially) a sentient cat as well.

Technically, Echo is a Crat, not a cat, which basically means a cat that has the ability to understand and speak languages. But make no mistake: this is the first novel I’ve read where the protagonist was a cat, and it was everything I could have wished for in that respect. This was helped along by Moers’ illustrations, which were, as usual, superb. This image might be one of my favorite book illustrations ever.

In this book, Echo the Crat is starving on the streets, when the town’s resident tyrannical Alchemaster Ghoolion happens across him. As Ghoolion needs Crat fat for some of his sinister alchemical experiments, they strike a bargain. Echo, who was days from dying of starvation anyway, will get a month of full bellies and gastronomic delights such as he’d never dreamed up. And after a month of fattening him up, Ghoolion will kill him and render him down.

Since ~~chemistry~~ alchemy is cooking and cooking ~~chemistry~~ alchemy, Ghoolion keeps his end of the bargain. Along the way, Ghoolion tells Echo all sorts of secrets of cooking, as well as alchemy - he’s not reluctant to share his secret knowledge with Echo, because who is he going to tell? But as the days tick down, Echo naturally seeks a way out of the bargain he has made.

I’ve previously described Moers’ The City of Dreaming Books as a love letter to reading, and books in general. The Alchemaster’s Apprentice is similar, but it’s a love letter to food and eating. It’s of course packed full of the Hithchhiker’s Guide-esque asides and stories of Zamonia that all of Moers’ books have. It’s not the best of the Zamonia books, and I wouldn’t really recommend it to someone who hasn’t read and loved some of the others, but it was still very good.

And the protagonist is a cat. This is a point that bears repeating. ...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Kate Sherrod rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-favorites

Every new-to-me Walter Moers book I pick up immediately becomes my new favorite Walter Moers book, and thus one of my favorite books, full stop. This has happened ever since I first stumbled across a somewhat battered copy of Rumo and his Miraculous Adventures several years ago at my local public library and wondered what the hell was going on with that. One is always going on with the mix of over-the-top imaginative fantasy, adorable illustrations, sophisticated plotting and outrageous wordplay Every new-to-me Walter Moers book I pick up immediately becomes my new favorite Walter Moers book, and thus one of my favorite books, full stop. This has happened ever since I first stumbled across a somewhat battered copy of Rumo and his Miraculous Adventures several years ago at my local public library and wondered what the hell was going on with that. One is always going on with the mix of over-the-top imaginative fantasy, adorable illustrations, sophisticated plotting and outrageous wordplay that is Walter Moers. Oh, do I love this man. And his translator into English, the wonderfully named John Brownjohn, who has the unenviable task of turning all of those invented and ordinary compound German nouns and verbs into something intelligible in English without losing any of the original's wit and charm and, as far as I can tell, succeeds brilliantly.

Or at any rate, if Brownjohn is in any way not hitting Moers' mark, then I'm not sure I could handle more Moers. As such. Feel free to throw something at me now.

The Alchemaster's Apprentice is another Zamonia book, Zamonia being, of course, a lost continent that once took up most of the Atlantic Ocean and was home not only to sentient and literate dinosaurs who achieved a very high standard of culture indeed (at least a high Middle Ages standard), but to a myriad of other astonishing creatures as well, including the new-to-this-fifth-novel Crat. A Crat being a sort of cat who can speak every language, human or animal, in the known world, and whose body fat is an alchemist's, well, I would say an alchemist's philosopher's stone, but everyone knows that the philosopher's stone is the alchemists' philosopher's stone, so something just short of that. At any rate, very desirable indeed.

Enter one Succubius Ghoolion*, titular Alchemaster, who is a sort of Jean-Baptiste Greouille through Moers' funhouse mirror in that, like the perfidious perfumer of Suskind's most famous novel, he is obsessed with capturing the essences of things in the most durable possible form, that form being the rendered fat of rare and fabulous creatures like Crats. Of whom Ghoolion suspects our adorable little hero, Echo the Kitty Crat, to possibly be the very last one. Um.

What follows from this state of affairs is another deliciously daffy Moers adventure -- perhaps the most delicious of all because, when Ghoolion finds Echo, Echo is starving to death and has no fat on him, but Ghoolion is a culinary genius and so sets about fattening his foundling in outlandishly opulent ways. If one doesn't drool through at least a few of these chapters, one is obviously some kind of icky ascetic who subsists on room temperature water and celery sticks or something.** Echo befriends a cyclopean owl-type thing who speaks in spoonerisms (Brownjohn must have had a heck of a time with those. He needs all of the awards for translating. All of them, do you understand me?) and is dedicated to helping Echo escape the terrible fate that awaits him, learns a lot of alchemical secrets, eats a lot of absurdly delicious food, and develops a charmingly weird relationship with Ghoolion in the process.

Along the way he picks up some other weird allies, such as a Cooked Ghost (which Echo helps to cook himself as part of his education), a couple thousand Leathermice (like extraordinarily ugly vampire bats with extremely strange habits of thought. Nobody understands Leathermice, dude. Not even Leathermice), and the last remaining Uggly in the city -- an Uggly being, of course, a sort of gypsy practitioner of a natural/homeopathic/herbal medicine that is pretty much the absolute antithesis of what Ghoolion does. Who despite Ghoolion's long history of persecution of Ugglies in every horrible way imaginable, has a crush on Ghoolion. Yeah, it's complicated.

It all builds to a thrilling and insane climax, Moers' best yet! So yeah, The Alchemaster's Apprentice is my new favorite Walter Moers. At least until the next one.

But yeah, I'm still puzzled about that roast wildfowl Echo was sort of tricked into eating mid-story. That's a head-scratcher of a loose end. But Echo does spend a lot of this novel tripping balls on some hallucinogenic meal or other... so... umm... yeah, I've got nothing.

*The character names are part of the fun of Moers, most of them being anagrams of popular authors' names, though so far I can't figure out whose name became Succubius Ghoolion, and I have tried. Oh, have I tried. But I'm a poor hand at anagram solving.

**Seriously, the food porn in this book is completely off the hook. Imagine Lewis Carroll and China Mieville collaborating on a cookbook and you might just get a hint of the flavor. WOW. ...more

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Apr 12, 2011 John rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Another entertaining yarn from Walter Moers.

This time, it is interesting to see Moers take his creativity into the realm of cooking. I am a picky eater who doesn't want to try much of anything, but his vivid imagery couldn't help but make me drool a little.

Furthermore, the lead character - a Crat - is a fun, protagonist. You are on his side right from the beginning, but there are moments where Moers wants you to think about why exactly you like this character...should you?

As always, I love whene ...more

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Jan 05, 2020 MissMeii rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books

Not really sure how I felt about this.

Towards the end the many turns and new plots were getting kinda exhausting and in general I just wished for a different ending. Also the gigantic theme of love wasn't up my alley.
I did love the world and characters (up to a certain point). In addition I found it refreshing to be 50% into a book and having no idea where it would go. ...more

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Jan 15, 2021 Linduš rated it it was amazing

Beautiful!

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Jul 15, 2010 Saskia Marijke Niehorster-Cook rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Walter Moers is one of the most imaginative people I have ever read. His novels are full of quests and goals that take the reader along for an unmistakable ride that just does not stop till the book is over, and it is so addicting that you want to go back to the beginning and start all over again.
The Alchemaster is his latest novel, and though this time around we do not get to explore much of the world of Zamonia, the ride is nerve wrecking just the same. The main character in this book is a " ...more

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Feb 17, 2010 Dave rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The forth (translated, we've yet to see Hansel und Gretal in english) book in Walter Moers Zamonia sequence. This is different from the previous books as, following just one month in the life of Echo the Crat (exactly like a cat, except it talks) it avoids the pattern of the whimsical, if somewhat dark, travelogue.
After the death of his mistress and on the point of starvation, Echo signs a contract with the evil alchemaster to be fed magnificent meals for a month, before giving his life so that ...more

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Jan 11, 2012 Kim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This was my second Walter Moers book, the first being The City of Dreaming Books. He's the MOST imaginative writer I've come across in a while, and I'll definitely be reading the rest of his books. But not only am I amazed at the creativity of Moers, I'm stunned by the translation into English. (Wish I had the translator's name here, but I don't.) The original German prose is filled with made-up words, and the English translation SOMEHOW manages to retain the author's intended impressions (at le ...more

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Feb 09, 2011 Amber rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book was full of surprises! It's the best kind of story, where you think you know exactly what's going on, and then there's a zig or zag in the road that catches you off guard. I've read 3 of Mr. Moers Zamonia novels now, and it fascinates me how each of the novels has had such a distinctive flavor to it. This book truly had the flair of an undiluted Grimm's fairy tale. It had all the horrific elements that you would want to have in a scary story, and it had a protagonist with an indomitabl ...more

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Aug 31, 2018 Hannah rated it liked it

Huh I really don't know how to rate this book... it took me ages to finish it and (to be honest) occasionally I wasn't sure if I would make it. Not that I didn't liked it, no it was wonderfully insane and whimsical, but also very lengthy and partially way to detailed- both attributes that make Walter Moers Zamonia books so special and which make me like them so much. However- those things I like in his other books made me struggle with this one. I admit it, after six month of barely making progr ...more

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Apr 23, 2019 Conor Ryan rated it liked it · review of another edition

I love Moers, and really wanted to like this book more than I did. Moers' signature wit and imagination are palpable, but I feel like he gets way too caught up in himself and less concerned with story telling at times. There so many imaginary names and places he throws at the readers, only never to mention them again. Of course inventiveness is one of his defining characteristics as a writer, and is used mostly to his advantage in his works, but is rather excessive in this piece.

This certainly ...more

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Apr 25, 2010 Judith rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This was definitely not my favorite Walter Moers novel. I usually enjoy the zaniness of Zambonia but this book was too slow and too creepy (in an unentertaining way).

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May 09, 2017 Erin Britton rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The Alchemaster’s Apprentice is chronologically the fifth of Walter Moers’ [or should that be Optimus Yarnspinner’s?] fantastical Zamonia novels although it is only the fourth to be translated into English [there still being no publication date for an English version of Ensel und Krete].

Malaisea, the least healthy place in Zamonia, is a city dominated by the Alchemaster Ghoolion, a sort of wizard-of-all-trades whose main passions in life are alchemy, taxidermy, controlling the Ugglies [Malaisea’ The Alchemaster’s Apprentice is chronologically the fifth of Walter Moers’ [or should that be Optimus Yarnspinner’s?] fantastical Zamonia novels although it is only the fourth to be translated into English [there still being no publication date for an English version of Ensel und Krete].

Malaisea, the least healthy place in Zamonia, is a city dominated by the Alchemaster Ghoolion, a sort of wizard-of-all-trades whose main passions in life are alchemy, taxidermy, controlling the Ugglies [Malaisea’s home-grown variety of witches], spreading intriguing diseases among the unfortunate inhabitants of the city [intestinal acne anyone?] and committing to canvas any natural disasters that particularly appeal to him. Into Ghoolion’s favourably miserable life comes Echo the Crat, a multi-lingual, dual-livered creature best resembling a cat. Following the death of his mysteriously relevant mistress, Echo had been begging and starving on the diseased streets of the city.

Echo strikes a deal with Ghoolion; rather than lingering for a few more days before painfully expiring of starvation, Echo agrees to be fed royally for a month on the condition that, when that period expires, he will allow Ghoolion to sacrifice him and use his fat for some nefarious alchemistic purpose. However, while Echo enjoys a good feed as much as the next Crat, he has no desire to become a magical ingredient and so enlists the help of his friends [the Leathermice, the Cogitating Eggs, the Golden Squirrel, the Cooked Ghost and Izanuela Anazazi, the last free Uggly in Malaisea] to aid him in escaping from his terminal obligations.

The Alchemaster’s Apprentice finishes with an afterword by Optimus Yarnspinner in which he acknowledges that his novel is actually a reworking of Echo the Crat by Gofid Letterkerl since Letterkerl’s style means that his stories are no longer accessible to modern readers. The Zamonia series often involves books within books and translations of translations and this is another clever example as The Alchemaster’s Apprentice is actually a reworking of Mirror, the Little Cat [Spiegel, das Katzchen in the original German] by Gottfried Keller. In another example of layers within layers of literary mythology, Walter Moers acknowledges that, when he translated Optimus Yarnspinner’s work from Zamonian to German, he too had to make some changes to render the text more suitable for contemporary readers.

This is another fantastic novel from Walter Moers. Zamonia and all who dwell there are uniformly great creations and Moers’ fantastical imagination is in top form again when crafting the adventures of Echo the Crat. Given that Echo is trapped in the city, less of Zamonia is explored in The Alchemaster’s Apprentice than in Moers’ previous novels, but Malaisea is such a quirky and peculiar place that it is pleasure to read a detailed description of the city and its inhabitants and so the tighter geographical boundaries of the story are never a hindrance to reading enjoyment. Echo is a great guide to the city and through his explorations insight is gained into the place and the people, particularly into the peculiar life of Alchemaster Ghoolion himself. Moers’ plotting is as funny and inventive as readers have come to expect and, although the shortest book in the series, The Alchemaster’s Apprentice is a truly wonderful fantasy that is every bit as good as its predecessors.

The wonderful text of The Alchemaster’s Apprentice is, as ever in the Zamonia novels, accompanied by Walter Moers’ inked illustrations which are excellent in themselves and also serve to further fire readers’ imaginations. A lot of it completely bonkers, all of it absolutely delightful, The Alchemaster’s Apprentice is another fine addition to the library of Zamonian literature in translation. ...more

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Dec 22, 2018 Gwen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

When I started reading this book I thought it wouldn't be as good as City of Dreaming books. By the end though I ended up falling in love with it. Echo is a charming protagonist and the set up of the novel has a great sense of tension. I have a feeling most other authors would have made the alchemaster an irredeemable villain, but in this books he has a charm of his own. I found myself second guessing if he was completely evil or if he was just a guy in a tight spot. The characters in this book ...more

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Mar 08, 2020 Bevin rated it liked it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jun 27, 2017 Nina rated it it was amazing

Easily one of my favorite books. I read it in one day when I was about 13 years old, I just couldn't put it down. Really entertaining, fun, weird, fantastic, and incredibly charming. The world is just so odd and magical that you can enjoy even the smaller chapters that don't really add to the plot. Like every other book by Walter Moers it's definitely a wild ride, but I highly recommend it. ...more

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Jul 20, 2017 Angelina Steffort rated it it was amazing

What a delightfully odd story!!
Nothing less I would expect of Walter Mörs and his Zamonia books. As always you find characters you love to hate and those strange creatures you find yourself compassionate for without warning.
Still, it's not a complete 5 star for me as were The City of Dring Books or Rumo. I give it a sold 4.78947261889 stars ;-) ...more

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Nov 26, 2017 MAYA rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: library-fiction

Another perfect fantasy novel from Walter Moers. I continue to be amazed by this author's imagination and genuine originality. The characters are interesting, the story full of unexpected twists and turns. Although his novel, Captain Bluebear, remains my personal favourite from all of Moers' works, but this is a close second. ...more

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Mar 06, 2018 Mel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 21st-century-fiction, fantasy, bought-2018

Reading this book while wanting to adopt a stray black kitty was a little traumatic! I just wanted to keep echo safe! The descriptions of all the food was lost on me but I still really enjoyed the story and the characters, parts I found quite surprising and shocking, parts quite lovely. Definitely much better than the Labyrinth of Dreaming books.

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Jan 23, 2019 Cherney rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 22, 2020 Haley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Normally I just rate books, but I really want to write a quick review for this book. I typically do not read fantasy books, but I am so glad I read this one. It took a few chapters to peak my interest, but after it got going it was such a fantastic book. The last line was so beautiful I almost shed a tear. Also, the art was so gorgeous!

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May 18, 2020 Jennifer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

I absolutely loved this book! It reminds me of The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, with its beautiful world-building. Walter Moers has such an inventive imagination that it makes me wonder how this book reads in its original language.

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About Walter Moers

Walter Moers

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Walter Moers was born in 1957 and is a writer, cartoonist, painter and sculptor. He has refused to be photographed ever since his comic strips The Little Asshole and Adolf were published, the latter leading him to be declared persona non grata by the political right in Germany. Walter Moers lives in Hamburg.

Other books in the series

Zamonien (1 - 10 of 12 books)

Books by Walter Moers

The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear (Zamonia, #1)

The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures (Zamonia, #3)

Das Labyrinth der Träumenden Bücher (Zamonien, #6)

Ensel und Krete. Ein Märchen aus Zamonien (Zamonien, #2)

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Quotes from Der Schrecksenmei...

“Picture to yourself the most beautiful girl imaginable! She was so beautiful that there would be no point, in view of my meagre talent for storytelling, in even trying to put her beauty into words. That would far exceed my capabilities, so I'll refrain from mentioning whether she was a blonde or a brunette or a redhead, or whether her hair was long or short or curly or smooth as silk. I shall also refrain from the usual comparisons where her complexion was concerned, for instance milk, velvet, satin, peaches and cream, honey or ivory, Instead, I shall leave it entirely up to your imagination to fill in this blank with your own ideal of feminine beauty.” — 19 likes

“This is wine," Ghoolion said solemnly. "Wine is drinkable sunlight. It's the most glorious summer's day imaginable, captured in a bottle. Wine can be a melody in a cut-glass goblet, but it can also be a cacophony in a dirty tumbler, or a rainy autumn night, or a funeral march that scorches your tongue.” — 10 likes

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