Zsa-Zsa, Zazu and a Grand Illusion is a fabulous story set in two palaces. The first is The Palace Theatre, where a magician, the Great Gizmo, has gone missing, leaving a pile of debts; the second is a palace, somewhere and sometime in the Orient where a ghastly Dowager Empress has taken over the running in the Emperor's absence. Trying to remove any trace of the old court, she asks her new magician Malodorous to use the `Great Fan of Being and Unbeing' to annihilate the five `Teadragons' - guardians of the Imperial Treasury. They escape total oblivion with the help of Zazu, the oddest bird you'll encounter. Back at the theatre, where protagonist Zsa-Zsa has suddenly woken up in a plush seat, some very strange things are happening, with the forced landing of a flying boat and a travelling clock that materializes out of nowhere. All is explained by Obadiah, the stage door hand, by his theory of `Wobblement' - when all the theorems and formulae that govern the known and unknown world just need a rest and go on a break for a while. The two storylines collide in the theatre, where the bird and Zsa-Zsa meet the Emperor, his clockmaker and ethereal engineer, Failsworth, and the loathsome Dowager Empress and her lickspittle Malodorous. Oh yes! And a pantomime horse and some repulsive slugs... Although the story is essentially a fantasy - featuring a travelling clock whizzing through space, a bird unsure whether it's a machine or an animal, Teadragons who are vaporised on to a rug, a magic fan - it also lets the reader gently question the nature of time and magic in this world or indeed others and whether machines can develop consciousness. Zsa-Zsa, Zazu and a Grand Illusion is a young adult novel, similar in tone to Catherynne M. Valente's `Fairyland' series, that will appeal to fans of the surreal and the fantastical.

 

There are 160 pages in this book. This book was published 2017 by Troubador Publishing .

Peter Sanders worked in the Civil Service on security resilience and NATO issues for much of his career. He is now a volunteer at St Christopher's Hospice in South London and lives in Rye.