P-List alum reviewed Walter Moers' RUMO

[Charles Albert]

Read this to the kid a few years ago - never knew that it had been reviewed
by noted p-lister....

 *Canine Conan*

In his native Germany, Walter Moers has an immense career, hailed for his
comics, fiction and animated cartoons. Here in the United States, his
profile is less pronounced, although readers should have been jolted into
awareness of his true stature by the arrival last year of *The 13-1/2 Lives
of Captain Bluebear* . This massive, manic fantasy set on the antediluvian
continent of Zamonia, exhibited seemingly boundless narrative energy,
invention and verbal flair, complemented by Moers's own drawings.

His new book, *Rumo* (Overlook, $26.95), also fancifully illustrated,
likewise takes place in Zamonia, but it's radically different in tone.
(Kudos to translator John Brownjohn, for this graceful rendition into
English.) Less picaresque and much darker, it's more a bildungsroman in
which our titular hero descends to Zamonia's Netherworld in pursuit of his
abducted love, Rala.

We first witness Rumo, when just a youth, killing a nest of ogres. He next
finds himself in the city of Wolperting, where he acquires an education in
combat and science. But then, in Rumo's absence (he's searching for a
Threefold Token of True Love), the inhabitants of Hel make off with all the
Wolpertings, dragging them to the Netherworld for torture and gladiator
games, and leaving Rumo as their sole savior.

Parodic and sincere, slapstick and heart-tugging by turns, Moers's novel
has fresh things to say on the nature of heroism and nobility. As if Tom
Robbins had been inspired to rewrite Tolkien, Moers manages to imbue
classic sword-and-sorcery motifs with his off-kilter worldview. ·

*Paul Di Filippo's new novel is "Time's Black Lagoon."*


love,

cfa
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