Zorgamazoo
- ️Sun Feb 24 2013
Zorgamazoo is a full-length novel written entirely in rhyming couplets.
(We'll give you a second to process that.)
Okay, we're back. The novel was written by Robert Paul Weston, a Canadian author (who has also lived in England and Japan) who got the idea when looking up song lyrics on the internet.
From the official site:
Zorgamazoo tells the rhyming, rhythmical tale of Katrina, a girl with a big heart and an even bigger imagination.
Too bad Old Krabby will have none of it! She thinks Katrina is losing her marbles—and worse, she hires the quack neurosurgeon, Doctor LeFang, to make a midnight housecall! But there’s nothing wrong with Katrina’s noggin. In fact, she’s perfectly sane.
The strange figure Katrina spotted, bumbling through the subway tunnels beneath the city, is Morty the zorgle. He’s been sent on a quest to find the lost zorgles of Zorgamazoo...
When Katrina and Morty join forces, however, they discover it’s not just the zorgles who have gone missing. Someone—or something—has kidnapped all of the Earth’s most magical creatures!
It isn’t long before Katrina and Morty uncover a bizarre, intergalactic conspiracy that threatens the existence of every last griffin, ogre, sphinx, dragon, mermaid, pixie and zorgle on the planet!
Zorgamazoo contains examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: ...at least when they're human adults.
- All There in the Manual: Mad Doctor LeFang's first name is 'Reginald'. This is never mentioned in the book - it's in his character bio
on the official site. - Artistic License – Space: The later parts of the book that take place on the moon have this in spades - people seem perfectly able to breathe on the moon, a difference in gravity is never even mentioned, sound travels normally, etc. Of course,
none of this is really meant to be taken seriously - the character interactions take centre stage, not the science. - Calvinball: 'Zorgally Ball', a repeatedly-mentioned sport that is said to be a combination of 'cricket, swimming and chess'. Hilariously enough, the vague descriptions of actual gameplay make it sound like ordinary baseball.
- Female Monster Surprise: Winnie, whose gender is discovered when Katrina realizes she's wearing ribbons and bows in her fur.
- Herr Doctor: In the audio readings by the author, Dr. LeFang is given a vaguely German sounding accent (though it falls more into "generically European")
- Hidden Supplies: Katrina keeps odds and ends she finds and hides them in a box (later her backpack) until they become useful. They're apparently useful enough to reverse alien technology.
- Impossibly Cool Surgical Impliment
- Necessarily Evil: Dullbert. He's only doing what he's doing to save his planet.
- Mechanical Monster: The Octomabots are a combination of this and Cool Ship.
- Melancholy Moon: An odd reversal of the trope, as the melancholy gazing up at the night sky happens while on the moon (which technically makes it a "Melancholy Earth" instead).
- People Zoo: A variation of this is the fate that befell most of the world's magical creatures.
- Rubber-Forehead Alien: The Graylians are basically just midget-sized, monochromatic humans.
- Rummage Sale Reject: Morty is referred to as having an outfit of this type, complete with multicolored pants!
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Dullbert, who sometimes tilts more into Shrinking Violet territory.
- Unobtanium: 'Tedium Steam', a fuel made of pure boredom. As well as its colorful counterpart, 'Enchantium Gas'.
- Unlucky Everydude: Mortimer Yorgle fits this trope quite well... he just happens to be a ground-dwelling furry monster.