A Quandary of Fibbles: Tales of True Love and Lust Amid Head-choppers, Spells, and Urban Ennui

"A Quandary of Fibbles" by Howard Denson tells the story of Princess Esmeralda in the Kingdom of Quandary. She is in love with a clumsy knight, Sir Jonathan d'Klutz, but her father, King Geoffrey the Grouch, despises her suitor. Sir Jonathan's protectors are Sweet Margaret (whom children call "Mag the Hag with the Sagging Bags") and Fred, Ted, Ed, and Ned, the talking heads on the pikes at Hogmoor Castle. They try to protect the young knight, but he decides to prove his merit by taming the rampaging Sir Bull in the pasture near the castle. Unfortunately, Sir Bull dispatches the youth and then does in the princess when she rushes to his side. Their spirits then begin migrations over the centuries until she ends up in a pot-bellied stove and he in the body of Johnny the Junkman. Sweet Margaret has given the Talking Heads the mission of looking out for the two so they can be united at some point. Meanwhile, King Fengon from Miasmort has been trying to destroy Quandary, and Esmeralda's lascivious sister, Princess Ethel the Ready But Remember She's the King's Daughter, assembles a team of the Talking Heads, four headless country boys, and a raven to face the challenge of the Miasmorticians. The book can be viewed as a collection of fibbles (part fable and part fib, but always poetically true), or even as a family saga novel since it takes generations for the story to be resolved. It tips its hat to medieval troubadours, Thurber, Aesop, Freberg, Fractured Tales, and Python, plus Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam.