Treachery of Kings

✍ Scribed by Neal Barrett Jr

• Publisher: Bantam
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 189 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0307480755

✦ Synopsis

Obeying a royal command can be hazardous to your health....

In a magical world where animals have been given human form and chaos can often be the nature of the day, some universal truths remain. Like the futility of war and the foolishness of leaders. And, of course, the lingering prejudice against the Newlies, the humanized animals.

But Master Lizard Maker Finn has no quarrel with creatures of any sort. Just returned from a highly traumatic vacation, he wants nothing more than a period of prolonged peace with his fetching Newlie lover, Letitia, and his greatest creation, a sassy mechanical lizard named Julia Jessica Slagg.

But the Fates, in the form of the capricious Prince of Fyxedia, have other plans in store for Finn. Fyxedia’s leader has commissioned Finn to build a fantastical lizard timepiece for his archrival, the mysterious King of Heldessia — an odd enough request since Fyxedia and Heldessia have been at war for 700 years. Worse, Finn has been ordered to deliver the clock himself: a mission that involves flying over the war zone in a rickety and badly patched balloon.

Finn can hardly refuse the commission, but the journey is the least of his problems. For Heldessia is a land as odd as any he’s encountered, and he can’t help but wonder what foul plot these monarchs have in store for each other. How can one lone lizard maker, his lover, and his mechanical creation foil a plot they don’t even understand — and still manage to come out of it alive?

From Booklist

Imagine a world like ours, except that among its inhabitants are several species of animals-turned-human, called Newlies, who still bark and growl but also speak and wear breeches and swords. In that world are two warring kings, one nuttier than a fruitcake and the other sane and sound, though a bizarre religious practice requires him to imitate the sleep of the dead for months, which enables an evil sorcerer to plot and scheme unimpeded. On this happy scene arrives Master Lizard-Maker Finn; his prized mechanical lizard, Julia Jessica Slagg, a dangerous and darling creature possessed of needle-sharp teeth, a ferret's brain, and an ironic wit; and Finn's Newlie lady-love, gentle Letitia Louise. Their mission is to deliver a remarkable birthday gift from their king in a hot-air balloon in the middle of a war whose cause no one remembers. A hostile giant is their only companion and guide. Highly entertaining and, in an odd sort of way, quite civilized. Paula Luedtke
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Also by Neal Barrett Jr.:

**The Prophecy Machine
**