With the nights getting longer and the weather getting colder, it’s the perfect time to curl up with a little comfort reading. Another helping of Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius? Thanks, don’t mind if I do!
In this latest novelization, Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle, Agatha has arrived at the town of Mechanicsburg, and she has a lot to deal with. She has to avoid capture by Baron Wulfenbach, stop the evil disembodied spirit of her mother from taking over her mind, protect her loyal companions (including her possible love-interest Gil, the son of the aforementioned Baron Wulfenbach), claim her inheritance as the long-lost daughter of Bill Heterodyne, and thwart the schemes of an imposter, all while retaking and repairing her family’s ancestral home, Castle Heterodyne.
Also? The castle itself is alive. And insane.
“…And worst of all, this place likes to think that it has…a sense of humor.”
For me, this installment the Girl Genius novelizations made the jump from a fun extra to required reading. There are plots within schemes within conflicting family loyalties here, and sometimes it felt like I needed a flowchart to figure out what’s going on. These novelizations bring things down to a more manageable pace so the authors can explain in a little more detail, and also provide some fascinating backstory.
The Foglios keep the exposition from overwhelming the story by making it entertainingly quirky and downright hilarious in places. There’s a tongue-and-cheek style to the writing, bizarre random things happen with very little explanation, characters constantly react to events in the most unexpected ways (a huge spiked ball comes rolling down the corridor: “I always wondered where that thing went on Tuesdays,”) and the footnotes continue to be some of the best in the business. (Gil mentions that the Baron wrote a monograph on how to communicate in the workplace. The footnote states that the title of the monograph was Don’t Make Me Come Over There!)
“You’re bleeding! What happened?”
Agatha rolled her eyes as Moloch pulled a roll of bandages out of one of his pockets. “Let’s just say that somewhere in this place there’s a dial marked ‘high drama’ and it needs to be turned way down.”
Just like the first two books, the chapter headers contain lots of trivia about the world of Girl Genius. These sections are much larger in this book, since most of them are from articles about the town of Mechanicsburg. The strange little city that formed around 
Castle Heterodyne is now styling itself as a tourist town, so most of the chapter headers are from travel guides that give details about the food, the shopping, the almost-certain-to-be-fatal spelunking expeditions in the underwater caverns (Signed waiver and copy of last will and testament are mandatory, trips are usually sold out a year and a half in advance.)
The citizens of Mechanicsburg are equally strange. Remember, this is a town that was created by the notoriously insane Heterodyne family, and for centuries living near a family filled with crazy Sparks (redundant description there) meant random attacks, marauding abominations of science, becoming a subject of a science experiment, or having a neighborhood redecorated with a live volcano. It’s made the townspeople…interesting, and prone to become minions of anyone with the Heterodyne gene.
“…we are the sons and daughters of those who served Sparks. The ones who were loyal. The ones who were useful. The ones who were lucky. The ones who survived.”
It’s a little disconcerting to have the instant undying loyalty of an entire town, but Agatha’s had two books to get used to being a Heterodyne, and she’s falling into the role of tyrannical Spark (another redundant description) much more easily. It leads to some hilarious scenes, like a physics-defying method for brewing the perfect cup of coffee. Dangerously for others (and for the structural integrity of the castle) it can also lead to Agatha stomping down a hallway, blasting traps and monsters with a hastily-constructed death ray without skipping a beat in her rant. Agatha has had a bad day. In fact she’s had several in a row and there are times when she’s just done.
“And I’m the evil madgirl with the death ray and the freakish ancestors and the town full of minions and the hoard of Jägers and the homicidal castle full of sycophantic evil geniuses and fun-sized hunter-killer monster clanks and goodness knows what else – “
She stopped, panting. A though had just struck her. A wonderful, terrible thought. She was that madgirl and she did have those things.
“And you know what? I can work with that!”
Gilgamesh Wulfenbach gets his own moments to shine as a good-hearted but easily ticked-off and terrifyingly intelligent Spark (a whole mess of redundant descriptions), and some of his battle scenes worked just as well in novel form as they did in the original comic. In fact all of the characters get a chance to be almost shockingly funny, or scene-chewingly mad, or marvelously clever. And Castle Heterodyne steals the scene every chance it gets in its own fun-loving, blissfully uncaring, totally ruthless way.
The book ends on a cliff-hanger, and unfortunately it doesn’t look like book four, Agatha H and the Siege of Mechanicsburg has a publishing date yet. I guess I’ll just have to pass the time until it finally does come out by re-reading the graphic novel version of the story. For the umpteenth time. It’s a tough job, comfort food reading, but I’ll struggle through. (Runs off to find her stash of graphic novels, and maybe another slice of pumpkin pie).
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!