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Lilac Fever #2
Codex Hyperboreanus
“Love, my dear, is the opium of the masses!”
A tyrannical queen rules the island of Severia with an iron fist, while her loyal vizierienne is determined to persuade her that in the art of government and politics, it is better to be loved than feared.
The steaks are high. Those who challenge the views of the trigger-happy monarch often perish in terrifying circumstances. Some fall down the stairs of the palace. Others die strangled by their own intestines. The most daring offenders are publicly beheaded by the queen’s trusted headswoman, Esther. She is a talented executioner whose fame spreads as far as the kingdom of Cynocephalia, inhabited by dog-headed people. Its ruler, King Anubis II, is an obsessive-compulsive bureaucrat who follows the letter of the law with religious vigor.
Only reckless explorers and hopeless criminals dare to sail in the stormy waters of the Arctic Ocean that surround the Far North, where there is nothing but nothingness. The lucky among them die from hypothermia, while the rest are maimed and eaten by polar unicorns—sea monsters with insatiable appetite for human flesh. Farther away, unbeknown to the rest of the world, lie the scattered islands of the Cycloptic archipelago, where the mighty Hyperborean Empire rises and falls in splendid isolation.
The first Hyperborean to reach the Old World is a ginger-haired giant who gets stranded on a beach in the queendom of Epiphagia. Its founders adopted a philosophy called egalitarianism and as a result their descendants evolved into headless freaks who speak a strange language called French. Their queen, Marie Antoinette, is a woman with a big heart and an even bigger addiction to pastry.
The second installment in Yanko Tsvetkov’s Lilac Fever series, Codex Hyperboreanus continues the author’s journey into his unique imaginary world where myth, romance, horror, and politics blend in a captivating amalgam of comic fantasy. A seasoned storyteller and bestselling author, Tsvetkov once again draws inspiration from One Thousand and One Nights and medieval literature to effortlessly reinvent their timeless subjects to modern sensibilities. The stories complement those found in the previous book from the Lilac Fever series, Sex, Drugs and Tales of Wonder. The accompanying illustrations are once again drawn by Tsvetkov’s creative alter ago, Alphadesigner.
A tyrannical queen rules the island of Severia with an iron fist, while her loyal vizierienne is determined to persuade her that in the art of government and politics, it is better to be loved than feared.
The steaks are high. Those who challenge the views of the trigger-happy monarch often perish in terrifying circumstances. Some fall down the stairs of the palace. Others die strangled by their own intestines. The most daring offenders are publicly beheaded by the queen’s trusted headswoman, Esther. She is a talented executioner whose fame spreads as far as the kingdom of Cynocephalia, inhabited by dog-headed people. Its ruler, King Anubis II, is an obsessive-compulsive bureaucrat who follows the letter of the law with religious vigor.
Only reckless explorers and hopeless criminals dare to sail in the stormy waters of the Arctic Ocean that surround the Far North, where there is nothing but nothingness. The lucky among them die from hypothermia, while the rest are maimed and eaten by polar unicorns—sea monsters with insatiable appetite for human flesh. Farther away, unbeknown to the rest of the world, lie the scattered islands of the Cycloptic archipelago, where the mighty Hyperborean Empire rises and falls in splendid isolation.
The first Hyperborean to reach the Old World is a ginger-haired giant who gets stranded on a beach in the queendom of Epiphagia. Its founders adopted a philosophy called egalitarianism and as a result their descendants evolved into headless freaks who speak a strange language called French. Their queen, Marie Antoinette, is a woman with a big heart and an even bigger addiction to pastry.
The second installment in Yanko Tsvetkov’s Lilac Fever series, Codex Hyperboreanus continues the author’s journey into his unique imaginary world where myth, romance, horror, and politics blend in a captivating amalgam of comic fantasy. A seasoned storyteller and bestselling author, Tsvetkov once again draws inspiration from One Thousand and One Nights and medieval literature to effortlessly reinvent their timeless subjects to modern sensibilities. The stories complement those found in the previous book from the Lilac Fever series, Sex, Drugs and Tales of Wonder. The accompanying illustrations are once again drawn by Tsvetkov’s creative alter ago, Alphadesigner.
140 pages, Paperback
Published May 26, 2019
2 people are currently reading
38 people want to read
About the author
Yanko Tsvetkov
10 books84 followersYanko Tsvetkov is a Bulgarian-born interdisciplinary artist who lives in Spain, writes in English, and publishes books in France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Turkey, China, and South Korea. He has visited several continents, traversed thick jungles, picnicked in scorching deserts, and booked a few taxis in crowded metropolises. He leads a second life as a caped superhero who fights prejudice with his giant laser.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 26, 2020
The entire book is worth reading because of the headless Marie Antoinette who thinks heads are tumors that grow on people's shoulders.
July 19, 2019
Brilliant! Every story brings forth an amazing new corner of a humorous, fantastic (and sometimes filthy) world. Enjoyed every second and gutted that it ended so soon!
January 11, 2021
Phenomenal! I've begun to expect this of Yankee Tsvetkov's work! His writings are the kind I can read again and again yet still enjoy as if it were the first time!
July 21, 2019
A very deliberate attack on gender norms in fairy tales. It's interestingly structured. Two main stories, a romance and a political chronicle, contain many mini stories, each very different than the other. Somehow all this manages to feel coherent, probably because of they are told with a lot of wit and political undertones. If a headless Marie Antoinette presiding over a democracy doesn’t make you smile I don’t know what will. It's a great continuation of the first book, although it can be read on its own outside of the series.
February 8, 2021
If you have high expectations after reading the first volume of this series, the second one won’t disappoint you. That doesn’t mean it’s just a collage of already successful tricks. While there are occasional links to previous stories and the action takes place in the same world, this book stands on its own and needs no “previously on…” intros. The structure is a bit different. The tales are nested in two overarching narratives.
The first one begins as a medieval lesbian romance between a tyrannical queen and her “vizirienne”. It resembles that of Harun Al Rashid and Shahrazad from the Arabian Nights, with a bit of a twist because the servant’s goal is not to escape death but to convince her cynical master that love is more powerful than fear. The romance almost imperceptibly turns into a philosophical battle with grandiose political implications and the ending will definitely come as a surprise.
The second narrative is a chronicle of an empire in the fashion of Asimov’s Foundation stories, but adapted to the comic fantasy genre. It follows an isolated civilization that sprung out by accident in an otherwise inaccessible frozen ocean, from its early egalitarian phase to its ascent as a powerful monarchy. Its rulers become obsessed with imperial expansion into the wilderness that surrounds them until one day their conquests are stalled by the limitation of the very device that enabled them. In its core this story is a treatise in geopolitics and just like the first part of the book, it’s peppered with enough humor and witticisms to not only make such a subject interesting for the common fantasy reader but hilariously entertaining.
The first one begins as a medieval lesbian romance between a tyrannical queen and her “vizirienne”. It resembles that of Harun Al Rashid and Shahrazad from the Arabian Nights, with a bit of a twist because the servant’s goal is not to escape death but to convince her cynical master that love is more powerful than fear. The romance almost imperceptibly turns into a philosophical battle with grandiose political implications and the ending will definitely come as a surprise.
The second narrative is a chronicle of an empire in the fashion of Asimov’s Foundation stories, but adapted to the comic fantasy genre. It follows an isolated civilization that sprung out by accident in an otherwise inaccessible frozen ocean, from its early egalitarian phase to its ascent as a powerful monarchy. Its rulers become obsessed with imperial expansion into the wilderness that surrounds them until one day their conquests are stalled by the limitation of the very device that enabled them. In its core this story is a treatise in geopolitics and just like the first part of the book, it’s peppered with enough humor and witticisms to not only make such a subject interesting for the common fantasy reader but hilariously entertaining.
June 28, 2021
This book begins like a fairy tale and ends like a political science textbook. It has a lot of hilarious aphorisms. Very different from the first book, which I loved as well!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews