Literature / The Song of the Quarkbeast

The second book in Jasper Fforde's young adult urban fantasy The Last Dragonslayer series, first published in 2011.

A now sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange is fresh off her stint as a Dragonslayer, hero to the realm and savior of magic (which is finally coming back, albeit slowly). Things are back to normal at Kazam Mystical Arts Management, with Jennifer hiring out her licensed sorcerers to do the menial tasks (like unclogging drains and predicting the weather) that keep a roof over their collective heads.

But the "Big Magic" Jennifer caused in Book 1 hasn't gone unnoticed by the despotic King Snodd IV, who wants to consolidate all the Houses of Enchantment in Hereford under his direct control — after all, the magic that once-upon-a-time powered the mobile phones, aircraft radar, and medical scanners could make a man rich beyond his wildest dreams if he were to control the only wizards who can restore Electro-magical devices to working order. Nor has Jennifer's work been ignored by the odious Conrad Blix, Snodd's newly appointed "Official Court Sorcerer" and head of Kazam's rival agency iMagic (formerly Industrial Magic). Blix will stop at nothing to erase the competition at Kazam so he can share in Snodd's profits.

The only person standing between Snodd, Blix, and complete control over the the resurgence of magic is Jennifer. Blix has challenged Jennifer's sorcerers to a contest, iMagic vs. Kazam, the outcome of which will decide the fate of both companies. Trouble is, half of Kazam's workforce has been knocked out of commission by a rogue petrification spell, proprietor Mr. Zambini is still missing, and the competition is almost certainly rigged in iMagic's favor.

Jennifer has only one licensed Wizard left on her roster, plus faithful (if powerless) assistant Tiger Prawns and trainee magician Perkins Perkins (who may have a bit of a distracting crush on Jennifer). She'll have to scrape together every ounce of ingenuity she possesses to vanquish Blix's ambition and pull out all the stops to derail King Snodd's plans. It may involve a trip on a magic carpet at the speed of sound to the Troll Wall to try and locate Mr. Zambini, dodging man-eating trolls and malevolent magic all the while. It may involve a second Quarkbeast sniffing around town, one that bears a suspicious resemblance to the faithful Quarkbeast that sacrificed itself to save Jennifer's life in the Dragonlands. It might also involve Hector, the mysterious Transient Moose of Zambini Towers; a confounding prophecy from a notorious soothsayer; a wizidrical battery that could explode at any given moment; and a reclusive, powerless sorceress named the Once Magnificent Boo.

The odds may be stacked against her. The challenge may seem insurmountable. But one thing is certain: Jennifer Strange will not relinquish the noble powers of magic to big business and commerce without a fight.

The Song of the Quarkbeast is followed by The Eye of Zoltar.

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Tropes in The Song of the Quarkbeast:

• All Trolls Are Different: Just to the North of the first Troll Wall, Jennifer encounters a pair of trolls while searching for The Great Zambini. These trolls are tall, muscular, covered in intricate tattoos, wield massive clubs, and speak very good English. They're also violently opposed to humans and more than happy to kill any they see on sight because the trolls view humans as a pest akin to rodents or locusts, with just enough intelligence to deplete natural resources and live in an unsustainable style that will eventually destroy the environment. One troll mentions that a friend keeps some humans as pets.
• Aside Comment: When Jennifer devises a plan to get Perkins to infiltrate iMagic by pretending to double-cross Kazam, she gives him a black eye in order to sell the ruse. When she does, she addresses the audience:
  Reader, I punched him Right in the eye, a real corker — a punch like I'd never punched anyone, expect that time back at the orphanage when Tamara Glickstein was bullying the smaller kids.
• Brainless Beauty: Samantha Flynt, a sorcerer known for being extremely pretty but very dim. She failed to get her magic license three years in a row, and at one point, even has her dress on backwards.
• Bizarre Human Biology: When a wild Quarkbeast uses a surge of wizidrical energy to escape the poacher Lord Bloch-Draine, Jennifer gets caught up in the outrush of random spelling and ends up "mirrored". At first she thinks her clothes have been spelled backwards (as Lord Bloch-Draine's had been spelled inside-out), but soon she realizes that a small mole has moved to the opposite side of her body... and that she has suddenly become right-handed. This would mean all her internal organs had flipped around as well, giving her a magically-induced case of Situs inversus.
• Court Mage: Conrad Blix gets himself appointed Court Mystician by King Snodd IV. It's part of his plan to put himself on the throne — the court mystician is automatically 8th in line to rule.
• Dog Dies at the End: Inverted from the first book. Quarkbeasts reproduce by creating mirror images of themselves when they have the opportunity to siphon off massive quantities of Shandars (in the range of 1.2 gigashandars) from wizards performing powerful magic. When the mirror image of Jennifer's Quarkbeast siphons energy from the bridge building contest, it replicates Jennifer's original Quarkbeast down to the markings and skewed scales. Jennifer's revived Quarkbeasts even recognizes her and Tiger, and resumes its position as her terrifying guard dog/ beloved housepet.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Between Blix and Boo. She had been young and impressionable when she married Blix, only for him to arrange her kidnapping and have her index fingers cut off.
• Everyone Went to School Together: The Great Zambini, the Amazing Conrad Blix, and Miss Boolean Champernowne Waseed Mitford Smith (aka the Once Magnificent Boo) all competed on the Ununited Kingdom's 1974 Olympic Sorcery team. Blix and Zambini were also rivals for Boo's hand in marriage. She eventually married Conrad Blix in secret, but the two grew apart after her kidnapping.
• Evil Chancellor: Conrad Blix. Blix convinces King Snodd IV to appoint him Court Mystician — a position that conveniently puts Blix 8th in line for the Throne of Hereford — and immediately starts plotting to murder the king, the royal family, and everyone else ahead of him in line for the throne. His plot involves a rigged bridge re-building contest to concentrate the a massive amount of Wizidrical energy in one place, which will prompt an errant Quarkbeast to create a double of itself and then explode spectacularly when it comes in contact with its double.
• Explosive Overclocking: In order to get Jennifer to Troll Wall (280 miles away from Hereford, with 32 minutes to get there) in time to catch the Great Zambini during his next predicted appearance, carpeteers Prince Nasil & Owen of Rhayder push their flying carpets to go supersonic. That means flying a Turkish rug held together by magic and willpower at a speed of seven hundred and sixty miles per hour. They have the forethought to bring parachutes with them, and Owen ends up using one when his carpet disintegrates in midair. Jennifer and Prince Nasil make it all the way to the wall, but Prince Nasil's carpet is destroyed in the process — they have to take the train back down to Hereford.
• Face–Heel Turn: Blix, Boo, and Zambini used to all be close friends until Blix’s increasing greed and corruption led to him falling out with both.
• Fingore: When Boolean Smith was captured by anti-magic extremists, they cut off her index fingers. This rendered her unable to perform magic, as sorcerers require their index fingers to focus wizidrical energy. This trope gets even more horrifying when it's revealed that her husband Conrad Blix was the one who arranged for her to be kidnapped and mutilated. He had sought out the precognitive abilities of a famous soothsayer to divine their future together. He learned that Boo would be "greater and more powerful than he, and ultimately the agent of his downfall." Blix couldn't stand the idea that his wife would outshine him, so he had her crippled.
• Hot Witch: Samantha Flynt is a dimwitted trainee wizard at iMagic and quite possibly the most attractive magic practitioner in the Ununited Kingdom. She's failed the magic licensing exam multiple times, but King Snodd's useless brother was willing to grant her a license anyways because she's "so utterly captivating" (a fact that Conrad Blix tried to exploit by having Samantha perform the test in a swimsuit).
• Hidden Depths: At the end, Samantha tricks Blix into thinking she loves him in an attempt to stop his index fingers. It doesn’t work, but all of Kazam admires her bravery.
• iProduct: Discussed and Lampshaded — Industrial Magic, Kazam's competing agency mentioned in the last book, has undergone a makeover and dubbed itself "iMagic":
  "What's with the iMagic name change?" I said.
  "Industrial Magic was a bit of a mouthful," Blix explained. "Besides, putting i in front of anything makes it more hip and current."
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Invoked and immediately Averted — Conrad Blix tries to get orphan Jennifer on his side by claiming to be her long lost father. She immediately calls his bluff and he admits to lying, but claims he had nothing to lose by at least trying to pull it off.
• Office Romance: Hints of this between Jennifer and Perkins. She constantly turns him down due to the complications of dating someone at work.
• Punny Name: One of iMagic's wizards is the "Truly Bizzare" Tchango Muttney (i.e. mango chutney).
• Royal Brat: The two children of the king and queen, known for being very spoiled and constantly throwing tantrums.
• Rich Language, Poor Language: The upper class speak in such an affected manner that "High British" is considered a dialect distinct from "Common British."
• Secret Relationship: Conrad Blix and Boolean Smith secretly married after they competed on the Ununited Kingdom's Olympic Sorcery team in 1974. They became estranged after Boo was kidnapped and mutilated by anti-magic extremists (an event orchestrated by Blix), but it appears they never bothered to get a divorce.
• Shapeshifting: A couple sorcerers have this ability. Blix shapeshifts into Samantha in order to sneak into Kazam.
• Show Within a Show: Tiger takes The Mysterious X to see a showing of Rupert the Foundling Conquers the Universe.
• Taken for Granite: Lots of people getting statue-d in "The Song of the Quarkbeast":
  • While trying to hack the Dibble Coils (a spell that can store ambient wizidrical energy for later use, much like a giant magic battery), Lady Mawgon gets petrified by one of the counterspells that protects the coils' spellcode from being meddled with. When Monty Vanguard tries to find the lines of spell that petrified Lady Mawgon, he gets alabaster-ed too.
    I'd never seen anyone turned to stone before, and after the initial shock wore off, I ventured closer. Every single pore of Lady Mawgon's skin, every wrinkle, every eyelash, was perfectly rendered in the finest alabaster. It felt odd being in such close proximity to he even if she was now a four-hundred-pound block of stone, and although getting turned to stone was bad news, it might have been worse. The really serious cases of petrification involved dolerite, marble, or, worst, granite.
  • Jennifer deduces that wizards turn themselves into stone in order to slow down the aging process. The process is similar to suspended animation, with the added risk of having an arm or a nose break off if someone gets careless while dusting them off. Mother Zenobia confirms her theories:
    "I do indeed change to stone every night in order to delay death's cold embrace. Eight hours of sleep over an eighty-year lifetime is about twenty-six years. Wasted time, if you ask me, except for dreaming, which I miss. I've been rock during the winter months for the past seventy-six years as well, and when my last fortnight beckons I will be with you for an hour a year. I may last another century as this rate."
  • Conrad Blix is transformed into granite when the Once Magnificent Boo (his wife) regains the index fingers (or at least the bones that are leftover after thirty years at the bottom of a well) that Conrad had arranged to have cut off. The statue is donated to the Hereford Museum so that locals can gawk and insult him.
• Title Drop: The sound made by two mirror-image quark beasts as they prepare to fuse and explode is called "the Song of the Quark Beast," and gets dropped in Chapter 24:
  The low hum rose in pitch as the Quarkbeasts moved closer to each other. It reached a whine, then lowered again as they moved a few inches apart. This was the song of the Quarkbeast.
  Others who have heard it are now little more than dust. But if I was about to die, then I was glad to have heard the song. It was lonely — one of lament, of unknown knowledge. A song of resignation, of poetry given and received. The small movements that the Quarkbeasts made as they padded around each other altered the hum so subtly that it sounded like an alto bassoon, but with one single note, infinitely variable.
  But it wasn't a song of peace, love, or happiness. It was a requiem — for all of us.
• Well, This Is Not That Trope: The opening paragraph of Chapter 1 begin with a description of how glamorous the magical industry is, only to be sarcastically refuted in the (very short) very next line.
  I work in the magic industry. I think you'll agree it's pretty glamorous: a life of spells, potions, and whispered enchantments; of levitation, vanishings, and alchemy. Of titanic fights to the death with the powers of darkness, of conjuring up blizzards and quelling storms at sea. Of casting lightning bolts from mountains, of bringing statues to life in order to vanquish troublesome foes.
  If only.

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