Literature / The Great Troll War

"Think you'll be okay?"
I paused for thought. We had to defeat the most powerful wizard the planet had ever seen along with an untold number of Trolls with dinner on their minds — and had little to help us: a princess with no nation, two fussy Dragons, fencers and marksmen who were neither of those things, a bunch of terrible worriers, two sorcerers with no magic, no plan, a vegetarian Troll and forty-eight hours in which to do it.
"Piece of cake," I said.

The fourth and final installation of Jasper Fforde's The Last Dragonslayer series, published in 2021, which wraps up the tale of Jennifer Strange, Kazam, and the magical world of the UnUnited Kingdoms.

Things have never looked more dire for Jennifer and her friends. Man-eating Trolls have breached Hadrian's Wall and swiftly overrun the UnUnited Kingdom, with only token pockets of resistance and the westernmost tip of Cornwall left free (protected by no more than a 10-km long trench filled with buttons). Worse, the Trolls are working with Shandar: the single most powerful wizard to ever live, would-be dragon exterminator, and evil mastermind behind a centuries-old plot to achieve world domination... or something like that. Jennifer and the surviving wizards of Kazam aren't sure what Shandar's plans are, but they can't be good. What they do know is that Shandar needs Jennifer's loyal Quarkbeast to complete his goals and will stop at nothing to get his hands on it.

There's also a succession crisis on hand, with Crown Princess Shazzine Blossom Hadridd Snodd (or is it "Queen" now?) still stuck in a lowly servant's body and a passel of the UnUnited Kingdom's snootiest princesses (who just so happened to be in Cornwall when the Trolls invaded) clamoring for clout. Then there's the loathsome Sir Matt Grifflon, who's made it his mission to seize power over what remains of the UnUnited Kingdom by wedding the Princess no matter what underhanded tactics he need employ. Compound that with an agoraphobic Troll refugee seeking asylum, a spell-sucking device that's left her sorcerers powerless, and the deepening mystery of what's been locked in the glove box of Jennifer's VW Beetle all these years...

But Jennifer is nothing if not stubborn: she will find a way to defeat Shandar, no matter the odds. With two days on the clock and a ragtag band of resistance fighters to back her up, Jennifer sets out to best a megalomaniacal sorcerer, beat back the Troll army, discover the truth about her long lost family, and ultimately save the UnUnited Kingdom.

Page contains spoilers for The Last Dragonslayer, The Song of the Quarkbeast, and The Eye of Zoltar.

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Tropes in The Great Troll War:

• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • The princesses have all read (and carry around a copy of) The Rulebook of Rules about Ruling for Rulers.
  • The Quarkbeast convergence is referred to as a "Quota of Fully Quorumed Quarkbeasts."
• All Trolls Are Different: As described in The Song of the Quarkbeast, Trolls are tall, muscular, smelly, covered in intricate tattoos, able to speak fluent English, and fond of eating humans. They've swept across the UnUnited Kingdom like a tidal wave under Shandar's leadership, decimating any meaningful opposition and subjugating the humans under threat of turning them into dinner. Jennifer and Co. find out that Trolls are also capable of nigh-instantaneously multiplying to take advantage of abundant resources like space or food. All copies of a troll are part of a Hive Mind, sharing the same memories in real-time. Their numbers decrease in a similar manner when resources are scarce.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: Shandar's greatest threat is to drain the power of the Sun to fuel his immortality and galaxy-hopping spells, which would snuff out all life on Earth. One of his demands is that Jennifer join his cause, since she unwittingly plays host to his severed soul. Jennifer offers to go with him if he finds another star to drain, and Shandar's counter-offer is that Jennifer must marry him when she turns eighteen.
• Ass Pull: Jennifer just so happens to have the royal signet ring of the Snodd family on hand to prove Princess Shazza's identity. She claims Queen Mimosa gave her the ring in secret when Princess Shazza was body-swapped with the indentured servant Laura Scrubb, but no mention of the hand-off was made in The Eye of Zoltar.
• Astral Finale: The final chapter take place with Jennifer onboard Shandar's spaceship as it sails towards Jupiter. The epilogue takes place back on Earth.
• Author Avatar: Overlaps with Creator Career Self-Deprecation — When the resistance needs someone to come up with wild, off-the-wall ideas to figure out just what Shandar's true goal is, Tiger suggests they find a fantasy author to help them brainstorm. The author they rope into their plans has a catalog of work identical to Jasper Fforde's (and is able to tell the page of the book they're on just by looking down). The author even appears in the epilogue, having Tiger review the notes he's putting together on Jennifer's life story before he starts work on the Dragonslayer chronicles.
  'Wait a moment,' said Boo, 'we need to make sure you're up to the task. Tell us a weird idea you've come up with that's totally out there.'
  'Well, said the author, 'I made George Formby president-for-life of Great Britain.'
  'Who's George Formby?' asked Tiger.
  'What's Great Britain?' asked Boo.
  'Okay,' he said, 'here's another: a book about Humpty Dumpty as a police procedural.'
  'I think that's been done,' said the Troll. 'Everyone's always retelling nursery rhymes. I mean, it's not a massive stretch, is it?'
  'How about a social order based wholly on the strength of your colour vision?'
  'Better,' I said, 'is there a sequel?'
  'Don't you start. I also wrote a thriller set in a world in which humans have always hibernated.'
  'I like that idea,' said Tiger. 'What are you working on now?'
  'The last book in a series for children.'
• Back for the Finale:
  • William of Anorak (who first appeared in Book 1) reappears to advise Jennifer on battling the trolls (after no mention of him was made in Books 2 and 3).
  • Knight of Hereford and international pop star Sir Matt Grifflon (also of Book 1) returns to play another minor villain for the last book of the series.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Earth is saved from Shandar's plan to destroy the sun, the Trolls have been rebuffed without further bloodshed, and the UnUnited Kingdoms have been united under the rule of a just and wise Queen who plans to transfer power to a representative democracy within the next twenty years. All this is possible because Jennifer Strange (and her recently discovered sister (and the Mysterious X if they do indeed exist)) gave up her life to stop the Mighty Shandar. The people who were killed and eaten by Trolls in the initial invasion are still dead, and the Kingdom is still rebuilding from the damage. Tiger is now the Dragonslayer and caretaker of a Quarkbeast pup, which are said to only appear in times of great calamity — but Tiger is optimistic that there's a time of peace ahead since the pup won't be fully grown for another 75+ years.

• Cast from Lifespan: Shandar grants Jennifer immortality a few weeks into their interstellar journey. When Jennifer discovers that the Mysterious X has stowed away on Shandar's ship hidden in Lady Mawgon's brooch, she gets their help (if they really do exist) to cast a spell fueled by her own (now infinite) lifespan and kickstart a thermowizidrical detonation large enough to achieve criticality and kill Shandar.
• The Chooser of the One: Mother Zenobia tells Jennifer how and why she came to be The Chosen One capable of defeating Shandar: years ago, the Great Zambini was able to locate Shandar's excised soul and set out to find an infant with a top-tier "Human Moral Worth Index" (which is apparently something that can be quantified and calculated when one is born) to host Shandar's "Better Angels" and eventually defeat the mighty wizard. He found the Assett family, with their four year old daughter Belinda and baby girl Catrina. Belinda was embedded with the D'Argentos, whose family has managed Shandar's holdings for 14 generations while the wizard himself remains petrified to extend his lifespan. Catrina was made into a living Soul Jar and brought to Zenobia's orphanage, where she was dubbed "Jennifer Strange" and raised to have an unflagging moral compass.
• The Chosen One: Exploited — Jennifer's role as the only person on Earth capable of defeating Shandar was engineered by Mother Zenobia and the Great Zambini. The infant Catrina Assett was unexceptional save for her high "Moral Worth Index" and the fact that her parents were willing to give up their daughters for the greater good. Zambini took Catrina and implanted her with Shandar's excised soul, then left her at Mother Zenobia's orphanage. Catrina was renamed "Jennifer Strange" (setting her on the path to become The Last Dragonslayer) and eventually apprenticed to Zambini for further training.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Exploited — Jennifer isn't really a war orphan as she was led to believe — her parents James and Lynda Assett are still alive, as is her sister Belinda. As an infant Jennifer was hand-picked by Zambini to be a Soul Jar for Shandar's excised "Better Angels" and hidden away in Zenobia's orphanage among hundreds of other war orphans so as not to arouse suspicion. It's implied that even her name "Jennifer Strange" was selected deliberately, since Shandar crafted the Dragonslayer's sword Exhorbitus with a list of all the future wielders embossed onto the blade. Since "Jennifer Strange" was the last name on the list, "Jennifer Strange" was the name chosen for the Assett infant.
• Creator Career Self-Deprecation: Overlaps with Author Avatar (see above). From chapter 10:
  'We need someone who can think bigger and more boldly than us. Someone who has fanciful notions and weird screwball ideas that fly in the face of logic and reasoning.'
  'What about — I don't know — a fantasy author?' suggested Tiger. 'They're pretty unhinged and come up with all kinds of weird and crazy stuff. Maybe they can help.'
• De-Power Zone: Shandar sets up a spell-sucking device near the resistance's base of operations that will keep the surviving wizards of Kazam from being able to cast any spells to resist him. This also has the effect of cutting off Kevin Zipp's precognitive abilities so he can't scry on Shandar.
• Diagonal Cut: When Sir Matt Grifflon and his hired goons threaten Jennifer, she shows off the cutting power of the Dragonslayer's sword Exhorbitus by slicing through a bit of the scenery:
  Exhorbitus and I moved again in a harmonious flash of light and steel. The minstrel stopped, shocked at my speed. He then nervously checked his own body to see whether there was a part of himself no longer attached. I could have sliced off his belt buckle and seen his trousers fall to the floor, but I wanted a more arresting demonstration of my power. After a two-second pause, the top of the iron post box next to me gently slid off and fell to the ground with an angry clang.
• Dog Dies at the End: Shandar collects all 36 Quarkbeasts in existence and engineers a simultaneous conjoining, using the immense amount of power generated by this event to achieve immortality. This includes Jennifer's faithful Quarkbeast companion, who had previously been killed off in The Last Dragonslayer and brought back in The Song of the Quarkbeast.
• Emotion Bomb: Human emotions generate magical energy, as Jennifer learned in the first book when the greed fomented by the open season on Maltcassion's dragonlands was able to power the kind of Big Magic that could undo Shandar's Dragonpact. Feldspar and Colin also confirmed that "love" was more powerful than negative emotions like greed or fear, but "impossible to generate artificially." When Jennifer learns that her parents are alive and proud of her, and that she has a sister who is willing to sacrifice her own life to help Jennifer defeat Shandar, she feels so much joy and love that she's momentarily able to overcome Shandar's powers and cause his spells to implode.
• Escape Pod: The Subterrain ship only has a single escape pod, since there's no risk of the burrowing craft sinking on land — the thought is that if the ship gets stuck, the crew can send up a single person to signal for help and wait for an excavator to dig them out. As the ship falls into a pit magma Shandar has summoned beneath his Mage Tower, the crew and Feldspar the dragon insist Jennifer take the escape pod and keep fighting the good fight.
• Footnote Fever: The first two chapters alone have 16 footnotes. The book as a whole has over 50.
• Foreseeing My Death: Feldspar is able to predict that his death is coming within the next day, and he informs Jennifer of his upcoming demise before they go off on a top-secret mission. When Jennifer tells him they can back down and return to Cornwall if it will save his life, Feldspar is insistent that the end is coming one way or another — he can either spend his last hours wisely (helping Jennifer and the resistance, going out in a blaze of glory) or foolishly (returning to Cornwall and getting hit by a car or something).
• Foreshadowing: Shandar tells Jennifer that she and Miss D'Argento will soon learn to get along "like sisters." Later, D'Argento reveals that she and Jennifer are actually the sisters Belinda and Catrina Assett.
• Fun with Acronyms: The Power Nullifier Shandar uses to combat the resistance is a HENRY, or Hex Energy Neutralising Reversal Yieldiser [sic]. They're also known as spell-suckers, and Jennifer claims a popular brand of vacuum cleaners is named after the device.
• Galactic Conqueror: Shandar's plan is to cruise the universe in a starship modeled on the Chrysler Building, subjugating all intelligent life under his god-like powers to build an eternal empire that spans the stars. And if he can't find any intelligent life? He'll create life in his own image and force those nascent civilizations to worship him.
• Girl in the Tower: Sir Matt Grifflon and Betty Scrubb kidnap Princess Shazza and hide her away in a strategic tower at Cromwell's Castle in the Isles of Scilly. Jennifer makes several digressions about the state of the monarchy-kidnapping business, the proliferation of towers in which to stash them, and the insurance industry that's sprung up to cover the cost of either ransoming the royals out of those towers or hiring a crack team of specialists to recover them.
• Godhood Seeker: Shandar's ultimate goal is to gain enough power to give himself immortality, then fly around the universe in a spaceship/ Mage Tower modeled on the Chrysler Building and subjugate all intelligent life under his command and rule as an eternal god-emperor.
• Gratuitous Princess: There's a whole convention of princesses at the Queens Hotel in Penzance when Cornwall becomes the last bastion of freedom in the UnUnited Kingdom.
• Hive Mind: Though they express individuality, Trolls are able to share memories and information with other members of their clan in real time. There's no secrets within a tribe, and it's impossible to tell a joke. It's mentioned that when a member of one Troll clan binged the newest season of a tv series before the rest of the clan could watch it, the clan killed them for spoiling the series for everyone. Subverted in that these aren't tribes of Trolls with a psychic link, but copies of individual Trolls who all share the same memory. Troll populations will instantly expand or contract to fit the space and resources available to them. There are only 15 individual Trolls currently alive, but once Shandar unleashed them on the UnUnited Kingdoms they multiplied to number in the tens of thousands to take advantage of the open space and abundance of tasty humans.
• Human Pet: For all that Trolls regard humanity as a vermin, some individuals are known to keep humans as pets — though one Troll notes that they need to "pull out the tongue" to stop their pets from squeaking.
• It Was with You All Along: Jennifer and her friends are desperate to discover a way to defeat Shandar. When Jennifer goes to Mother Zenobia for help, Mother Zenobia reveals to Jennifer that she is the Soul Jar for Shandar's excised conscience and has always held the key to defeating him — Shandar can't kill Jennifer because that would killing a part of himself.
• Just Whistle: Jennifer uses the Leviathan-tooth whistle Ralph gave her in The Eye of Zoltar to summon him when she and Tiger need a ride to the orphanage, and later to the Isles of Scilly to rescue Princess Shazza.
• Knighting: When Crown Princess Shazza is recognized as the ruler of Hereford and the rest of the UnUnited Kingdom, by virtue of being the highest ranking royal left to take command during a time of national crisis, she makes Jennifer a Knight and Tiger an Earl. Jennifer asks if girls can be made knights, and Princess Shazza responds "they can if I say they can." Sir Matt Grifflon rescinds the knighting and ennoblement when he makes a play for the throne, only for Princess Shazza to re-knight Jennifer and re-ennoble Tiger when Sir Matt and the imposter-princess have been found out and banished.
• Mage Tower: Shandar's base of operations is a full-size replica of the Chrysler Building that he magically conjured in an empty field in Devon. Turns out it isn't just a Mage Tower but a starship as well, on which Shandar plans to sail to other galaxies to subjugate any and all intelligent life he comes across.
• Meaningful Name: Jennifer's birth name is Catrina Assett, and Miss D'Argento's is Belinda Assett. The two girls are integral parts of the plan to defeat Shandar, i.e. the assets.
• Misfit Mobilization Moment: When Shandar interfered with the resistance's call for expert fencers, keen-eyed marksmen, and terrible warriors to combat the Trolls, Jennifer wound up with fence-builders, workers who paint marks on roads, and terrible worriers instead. The resistance initially struggles to figure out how these people utterly lacking in martial prowess will be able to combat the Trolls, but it turns out they don't need to fight. The terrible worriers make excellent planners, organizers, and fact-finders because they're paranoid about messing up. The fencers and marksmen are able to construct an unbroken 10-km long barricade and line of blue paint across Cornwall to take advantage to the fact that Troll populations will magically expand or contract to fit a given space. In the space of a few hours, they created a network of makeshift fences, hedges, and painted corrals that turn an army of thousands of man-eating Trolls into a couple dozen aimless, pliable Trolls that can be strategically herded back north of the Troll Wall.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Molly the Troll. Trolls are known for being violent, voracious man-eaters, but Molly is a vegetarian. She's also unique for not wanting there to be multiple copies of herself: Trolls magically multiply to take advantage of the space and resources available to them, with copies of the same Troll all sharing a Hive Mind. Molly dislikes the sensation, so she confines herself in the smallest spaces she can find to stop from splitting up.
• Mysterious Parent: Zig-Zagged — Jennifer discovers that her parents are still alive, but they're a normal couple named James and Lynda Assett who chose to give up their infant daughter to aid Zambini and Mother Zenobia in a plan to stop Shandar's centuries-long scheme for immortality and world domination. It's when Jennifer learns that her parents (and sister Belinda Assett) are proud of her and love her very much that she gains the strength to overcome Shandar's magic, which is based on greed and pain. Jennifer's joy creates a much more powerful magic, essentially turning into an Emotion Bomb that overwhelms Shandar and causes his immortality spell to explosively backfire.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Trolls are said to be led by Emperor Urdgg the Needlessly Violent.

• The Power of Family: When Jennifer attempts to overwhelm Shandar's power and set off a thermowizidrical detonation large enough to achieve criticality and take him out, she gets the boost of power she needs (since magic is powered by the force of human emotion) from Miss D'Argento's revelation that she and Jennifer are sisters, and that their parents are alive and love them very much.
• Power Nullifier: The HENRY, or "Hex Energy Neutralising Reversal Yieldiser" [sic], is a device that suctions up ambient magical energy and can prevent wizards from casting spells within a certain radius. Shandar sets one up near the resistance's base of operations in Cornwall to create a De-Power Zone, preventing them from casting spells or using magical means to defend themselves from the Trolls.
• Prince and Pauper: Zig-Zagged and overlaps with Twin Switch — Princess Shazza was body-swapped with the lowly palace servant Laura Scrubb when the UnUnited Kingdom was invaded and her original body killed (with Laura Scrubb's mind inside of it). On learning of this, Laura Scrubb's identical twin Betty Scrubb conspired with Sir Matt Grifflon to impersonate Princess-Shazza-in-Laura's-Body.
• Real Event, Fictional Cause: Jennifer notes that the Henry Vacuum Cleaner is named after the HENRY spell-suctioning device.
• Restricted Rescue Operation: When Jennifer has to save the real Princess Shazza from a tower on the Isle of Scilly, she has to do so without letting Sir Matt Grifflon or the imposter-Princess know. Jennifer was already working under tight constraints to combat Shandar, but now the rest of her allies at Kazam have been jailed for refusing to swear allegiance to Sir Grifflon and one of her dragons is dead. The only assets she's got to pull off the rescue mission are the sword Exhorbitus, Colin the dragon, Tiger the powerless human boy, and a friendly australopithecine with a Leviathan at his command.
• Requisite Royal Regalia: The princesses who were attending a conference in Cornwall during the invasion are all dressed in ballgowns and wimpole hats straight out of the middle ages.
• Royal Brat: Discussed and Exploited — the princesses are able to tell Princess-Shazza-in-Laura-Scrubb's-Body from her identical twin Betty Scrubb because there's no way to fake being as spoiled and entitled as true royalty.
  'Being a princess... is not simply about external beauty, deportment, grace accessories, tiaras, footmen, castles, and so forth, it's what's inside. An impostor could look like the real thing, take on all the trappings and even appropriate a castle and staff, but they could never truly be royalty, for the haughty dismissiveness and deep sense of entitlement to an empty life of conspicuous wealth and luxury — the very soul of a princess — can never be learned.'
• Series Continuity Error: In Chapter 19, Jennifer gifts Ralph with a box of matches that instantly get tucked away in his handbag. When Collin's pilot light has gone out in Chapter 20 and he needs a way to reignite it, Jennifer reports that "none of us had matches or a lighter, not even Ralph, who emptied his large handbag on the grass to check."
• Show Within a Show:
  • Princess Shazza was once on the reality show I'm a Princess Get Me Out of Here, where royal contestants were forced to do things like shake hands with commoners or iron a shirt.
  • Jennifer mentions another royalty-based tv show, No Money but an Impressive Title, "in which five princes of impecunious mans but an impressive bloodline had to battle it out to win the hand of a Grade VII princess, the sort whose Kingdom is barely larger than a couple of football fields."
• Shout-Out:
  • Jennifer and Tiger love Bergerac because the only entertainment at their orphanage was a copy of the 7th season on DVD. They're also big fans of the star John Nettles.
  • Trolls are said to love crime shows from the 80's like Murder, She Wrote.
  • In Chapter 4, Tiger and Collin the dragon get into a convoluted discussion about the timelines of the Back to the Future franchise.
  • The Subterrain Service (a military arm whose job is to tunnel underground) sing a "soft-ground shanty" based on the quatrain from The Stars My Destination:
    Proud subterraneans we be
    and Terra is our nation
    The subsoil is our dwelling place
    the worms our destination
  • Penzance runs a twenty-four-hour Harry and Sally marriage service, "because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of that life to start as soon a possible."
  • In Chapter 15, Jennifer finds Colin reading a copy of Mortal Engines.
• Soul Jar: Shandar reveals that he performed a "soulectomy" on himself to excise the "Better Angels" of his nature, i.e. his conscience. Zambini spent four years searching out the location of Shandar's soul, and when he found it he implanted those "Better Angels" into an infant Jennifer Strange. This made Shandar unable to kill Jennifer, and Jennifer the perfect agent to bring about Shandar's downfall.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Offscreen even — Moobin dies between the end of "The Eye of Zoltar" and the start of "The Great Troll War," using the last of his magic to dig a defensive trench around Cornwall and telepathically broadcast a country-wide suggestion that everyone fill it with buttons to deter the Trolls. (Not to mention the 37 other wizards back at Kazam who were killed by a thermowizidrical detonation. The only ones to make it out were Lady Mawgon, Monty Vanguard, Full Price, Kevin Zipp, the Mysterious X, Prince Omar Ben Nasil, and Tiger (who isn't a wizard but was in the basement when the building was attacked)).
• Star Killing: After Shandar gains immortality by absorbing the power of the Quota of Fully Quorumed Quarkbeasts, he's still going to need a power source for his reality-warping space travel spells (which are going to involve some faster-than light travel and a ship the size of the Chrysler Building). His plan is initially to drain the power of Earth's sun for this feat, but Jennifer bargains him down to taking a long flight to nearby Proxima Centauri (approximately 37 years at sub-light speed), and then Barnard's Star if snuffing out Proxima Centauri isn't enough energy to fuel his spell.
• Super-Speed: Boo gives Jennifer a 20-to-1 "Quickener" in case she needs to fight her way past Sir Grifflon's guards to reach Princess Shazza. It's a magical artifact containing a spell that will give Jennifer super speed and super reflexes for a short period of time (so Jennifer would experience 20 seconds of time relative to 1 second of real-time passing). Anyone watching her when she activated the Quickener would just see a blur of color jetting past.
• Take Over the World: Jennifer and her friends figure that Shandar's goal in conjoining all 36 existing Quarkbeasts is to harvest enough power — 2.1 TeraShandars to be precise — that he can take over the world. They trouble is, that kind of power will only hold out for a year or two of total world domination, and they don't know what his plans are for after that. Turns out they've done the math wrong, and Shandar's plan will result in the release of 2-raised-to-the-power-of-63 TeraShandars of power. That's enough for Shandar to gain immortality and become a Galactic Conqueror.
• Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Shandar's official title is now Super Ultra Grand Master Sorcerer, mover of mountains, he-who-the-storms-obey, commander of oceans, speaker of tongues, keeper of the sacred spells, creator of beasts, wiser than the ancient ones and purveyor of fine enchantments, no reasonable terms refused, his most powerful, bountiful worshipfulness: the Mighty Shandar.
• Twin Switch: Exploited — Betty Scrubb is the identical twin sister of Laura Scrubb. Princess Shazzine Blossom Hadridd Snodd is stuck in Laura Scrubb's body (since her original princess-y body (with Laura Scrubb in it) was killed in the attack on Snodd Castle) and has made her condition public knowledge. Betty conspired with Sir Matt Grifflon to imprison Princess Shazza and take her place.
• Vain Sorcerer: After absorbing the power of the conjoining Quarkbeasts, Shandar de-ages himself from looking like an old man to looking like he's in his mid-thirties. When he grants Jennifer immortality, he explains that he's cast the spell so that "you will age naturally until you are twenty-two and perfect in every way, then stay that way forever."
• Weaksauce Weakness: Trolls are afraid of three things: buttons, swimming, and a particular shade of cerulean blue.
• Wicked Cultured: Shandar's Mage Tower is a life-sized replica of the Chrysler Building. When Jennifer confronts him in the "control deck" he summons a quartet of Hollow Men to supply soothing classical music.

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