University student Edith Orozco finds herself thrown back in time to Ancient Egypt on the hunt for ‘The Book of the Living’. With a motley crew of sidekicks to assist her, including her young niece Moli alongside strangers Kiza and James, Edith’s goal is to locate the item as part of a mission to protect humanity from a malevolent evil. Battling gods and dinosaurs, as well as World War II monsters Adolf Hitler and Shirō Ishii, will Edith and crew have what it takes to save the world?

“Just what on earth is going on?” exclaims young James just moments after his introduction in the opening chapter of PRINCESS ROURAN AND THE BOOK OF THE LIVING by Shawe Ruckus. And many readers could be forgiven for echoing his cry. Within the first few pages they will have encountered references to a dinosaur called Confucius, a wise “Fen Tiger” called Alan, the Dragon Chariot of Ten Thousand Sages, a Conqueror Worm who quotes Edgar Allan Poe and the Rosetta Stone. None of these disparate things are given any particular context, rather they are a kaleidoscopic barrage of characters, objects and incidents that set the scene for this chaotic, sometimes confusing, but always highly entertaining fantasy novel. The book is seemingly pitched as a kind of YA adventure but it is more an adult satire fueled by myth and magic and the odd skewering of conspiracy theories. In Ruckus’s apocalyptic world the Palace of Westminster has been renamed Commando 444 and Shirō Ishii is experimenting on captive dinosaurs whilst Hitler contemplates teleporting to take tea with Cleopatra. Elsewhere the heroic Edith and crew scrabble around the pyramids looking for the ancient manuscript.

Ruckus is an excellent writer, brimming with ideas and able to translate these into both striking visual imagery and contemplative dialogue. Embedded within the text are various allusions to philosophy and literature, with specific references to Orwell, Emily Dickinson and Paul Tillich amongst others. These, alongside explanations of specific foreign words, are included at the end of the novel. A scan of the names of the authors that Ruckus refers to gives hint to his aims for the novel. Far from the simple YA style fantasy adventure that it superficially resembles PRINCESS ROURAN AND THE BOOK OF THE LIVING is an intelligent, highly literate contemporary satire. It is not any easy book, sometimes Ruckus’s wilder side-steps get in the way of the underlying plot, but it is always interesting and worthy of the time spent attempting to unpick its bundle of ideas.

An apocalyptic satire in the guise of a YA novel, PRINCESS ROURAN AND THE BOOK OF THE LIVING by Shawe Ruckus is a well-written and intriguing fantasy and a highly literate puzzle of a book that weaves the threads of ancient and modern history into a time-traveling tapestry of conspiracy theories and old fashioned adventure.

~Kent Lane for IndieReader