Humorous Fantasy / Satire

Hangrap and Drobhila

In the mist-shrouded gorges of the Hmirian mountains, a phantom maiden wanders in search of a man who will not desire her, for only such a man can lift the curse that denies her a body. Along the way she encounters a Yotichan warrior who mows clover with religious conviction, an aged adept who suckled stalactites as a child, a Kravidian hero who drinks rendered tallow for spiritual reasons, and a smuggler-poet named Horam who abducts wraiths for profit. The god Oesiks denies his own existence while pouring mead. The musky bird Nente spends most of the epic recovering from his own drunken soul. And a talking patch of earth has a foot fetish.

Presented as a scholarly critical edition of an ancient Hmirian epic, Hangrap and Drobhila is a wildly inventive literary parody that mocks academia, mythology, and the epic tradition with equal affection. The footnotes, penned by the feuding scholars Goldbergowski, Zagloba, Galickaja, Lipmann, Schlemann, and Wurtenheim, are as much the story as the verses themselves, packed with bitter professional rivalries, speculative linguistics, and conclusions that hover, in the words of one contributor, “precisely on the border between the genuinely brilliant and the wholly unfounded.”

Fans of Terry Pratchett, Umberto Eco, and Douglas Adams will find a kindred spirit in Vanja Spirin’s absurdist invention and warm, knowing wit. This is a book that takes nothing seriously except the next round, and, arguably, the three fragrant divine knees of the god Gobrat.

Price: 2.99

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