The Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless
by Ahmet Zappa
Minerva McFearless is an eleven-year-old monsterminator. Her family has been hunting down and destroying monsters for thousands of generations. But now the monsters have taken their revenge. The dreaded Zarmaglorg, the king of evil himself, has kidnapped Minerva's father. She and her little brother Max must set off to rescue him from Castle Doominstinkinfart. They are armed only with the Monstranomicon - a living book that holds every secret about every bloodthirsty beast known to mankind...and the gross recipes which will defeat them.
This is the first book in a projected trilogy about the McFearless family by the youngest son of Frank Zappa. He claims that his unconventional upbringing, his learning difficulties and being a high school-drop out have all contributed to the production of this surreal monsterfest. It is certainly a bizarre production, in many ways out-Dahling Dahl, to whom one detects Zappa owes a large amount of his inspiration. Indeed, some of the monsters' names are extremely reminiscent of The BFG, and Zappa's delight in the disgusting, violent, peculiar and unlikely takes the essence of Dahl and further distills it with details not unlike some of the grimmer passages of the Brothers Grimm.
There is a great emphasis on snot and other effluents, and on the sucking out and digestion of vital organs and bodily fluids - the more repulsive the better, all illustrated with sepia photographs posed by Zappa and a crew of monster lookalikes, together with recipe pages from the Monstranomicon. Already destined to be a film, this amounts to a computer game in book form, and will find its fans among those who revel in the kind of monster-zapping which Zappa clearly finds attractive.
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