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Slay and Rescue [Secure eReader]
eBook by John Moore
eBook Category: Fantasy
eBook Description: A young man named Charming who's a... prince, a particularly nasty dragon, an evil sorceress, and three beautiful damsels... all in distress. Well, Illyria is an enchanted land, and it's all in a day's work for our noble hero... Slay and Rescue was first published in 1993 by Baen.
"A humorous fantasy, and a charming one at that ... a delicious job ... all in all, good vulgar fun, and a neat job of melding and modernizing."
ASIMOV'S SF MAGAZINE "John Moore's delightful SLAY AND RESCUE stands out from the crowd ... All the main characters work well, and my favorite is Wendell, (Prince) Charming's pre-pubescent page, who's more interested in food than in princesses. Moore has a good sense of timing and knows how far he can carry a joke before it becomes tiresome. I laughed throughout SLAY AND RESCUE, and it's not easy to make me do that these days."
ABORIGINAL SF MAGAZINE "A clever, zany romp, full of creative one-liners and cheerful anachronisms, with language appropriately overblown for stereotypical effect ... hilarious sustained parody."
VOYA "A hilarious romp through several well-known stories."
FOSFAX "A glorious romp through fairytale times and places. And, of course, everyboyd lives happily. Fans of Terry Pratchett's Discworld will enjoy this."
KLIATT "A sidesplitting, rib tickling roller coaster ride of fairy tale parodies laced with hilarious bits connecting fantasy with modern day issues ... a must read for Monty Python fans."
ALTERNATE HILARITIES
eBook Publisher: JABberwocky Literary Agency
Fictionwise Release Date: January 1999
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The wizard was evil. Really evil. Evil with no redeeming qualities. He created plagues that fouled the air of the surrounding countryside. He created pestilences that poisoned the water of the villages downstream from his castle. He murdered lonely travelers, grinding up their bones for his powders and boiling their blood for his potions. He tortured small, furry animals in bizarre necrotic experiments. He pulled the wings off butterflies. Not for any magical reasons. Just for fun.
He never wrote his mother, not even on her birthday. At the marketplace he always squeezed the fruit too hard, leaving it unfit to sell. He welshed on bets. When he stopped at a local tavern (in disguise, of course), he drank freely of others' largess but would never buy a round himself. The Princess Gloria, on the other hand, was sweet, pure, chaste, and innocent. She was also chained to a wooden table in a locked room in the highest tower of the wizard's castle. The Princess Gloria was not crying. She had cried continuously for four days and eventually decided that it wasn't going to do her the least bit of good. Her only hope of survival lay in being rescued by an outside party. In which case, it certainly wouldn't do to be found with her eyes red and puffy. If she was killed, well, it wouldn't matter. Also present were the wizard's two henchmen, dimwitted thugs and ugly to boot, but effective enough in the physical violence end of the business. Now that the actual job of kidnapping was over, they weren't really needed, but the wizard felt safer with a couple of bodyguards around. Besides, seeing a beautiful naked girl in chains was a treat for them. They were kinky that way. The wizard Magellan bustled around the small room, setting out knives and beakers and flasks. His plan was to drain the blood from Gloria's living body; the blood of a virgin princess being very useful for all manner of dastardly spells, particularly if taken between midnight and sunrise. It was a warm night and he opened the small window. A faint breeze made the candles flicker, throwing dancing shadows against the stone walls. "It's not that I like hearing children cry. Oh no, far from it. I'm a soft hearted man and crying really bothers me. Sets my teeth on edge. And the screaming! Between midnight and dawn, that should give us nearly five hours of screaming. You scream, don't you? Don't shake your head like that. I can tell you're a screamer. My nerves are jangling already. I'd much prefer to stuff a gag in your mouth, but it throws off the dynamics of the magic." Magellan had a tendency to babble when he was doing something really nasty. The princess cringed. The wizard laughed evilly. The two thugs chuckled. The stage was now set for the entrance of Prince Charming...
Copyright © 1993 by John Moore
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