Are you now, or have you ever been, a fan of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett? Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift, Voltaire?

How about Blackadder or Doctor Who? Or maybe Horrible Histories as a kid?

Do you like Time Bandits, Baron Munchausen, Dr Parnassus or other Terry Gilliam fantasy films?

Or more recently, Everything Everywhere All at Once? Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die?

If you ticked five or more of those boxes, I suspect you might like my novel The League of Eponymous Jellyfish. (Don’t worry if the title doesn’t seem to mean anything. It’s not supposed to. Yet.)

I may be wrong, of course. You might hate it.

But there’s only one way to find out, huh?

Here’s the blurb from the back cover:

Dusting off ancient hieroglyphs in a desert cave, intrepid scholar Jerome and his rather more trepid assistant Leo are expecting linguistic enlightenment. Instead they become embroiled in the Vizier’s wicked schemes to enslave the world through his timberpunk translation tech.

Can they and their engineering ally Daedalus assemble an eccentric team of unlikely specialists to thwart these dastardly plans in a race against – and through – time?

Romping from the palaces of Ancient Egypt to the fleshpots of Georgian London, The League of Eponymous Jellyfish is a playful fantasy in the tradition of Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Terry Gilliam, interwoven with timely social satire as to the abuse of power and technology.

And here is the first chapter. I hope you enjoy it…

Chapter 1 - Rocks

“Don’t you think,” asked Leo, arching his inhumanly bushy eyebrows, “that if the entrance has been blocked with a massive boulder, there might be a good reason for that?”

“Of course!” Jerome beamed in reply. “To preserve the priceless information that lies inside and keep over-inquisitive seekers out, for starters.”

“And that doesn’t worry you? If we found out about this place, someone else must know too. Yet the stone’s still there. Maybe we’re not meant to…”

“Not meant to?” Jerome almost fumed. “This is knowledge, my dear Leo! It must be released and shared! It should be in a library, not locked away in this desert cave. These glyphs are our chance to glimpse through a window into the minds of the ancients!”

Leo rolled his eyes, scratched his hindquarters, and looked at the boulder, while Jerome cleared away some of the smaller stones wedging it in place.

“Meant to or not,” he sidestepped, “that’s a very immovable-looking boulder.”

“Not immovable enough to withstand the irresistible force of learning, Leo. Besides, we don’t need to move it much. Just edge it to one side a little, sneak in, copy down the glyphs, shove it back, and no one will be any the wiser.”

“So I fear,” Leo moaned.

Jerome grabbed his ironwood staff with both hands, and edged it into the narrow gap between the boulder and the cave mouth. He pushed forward as hard as his venerable sinews would allow.

Leo let out a snort, allowed himself yet another ‘why did I ever take up with this old fool?’ eyeroll – perhaps his twentieth of the day – and raised himself up to help, lending his not inconsiderable weight to the enterprise. The boulder began to shift outwards.

“Ha! What was it old Archimedes said?” crowed Jerome. “Give me a lever long enough, a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the – WHOOOA!”

The boulder had inched forwards, completed a half-turn with slowly growing momentum, then reached the start of slope they had just climbed. It didn’t take a master of science to work out how this experiment would end.

“WHOA!” Jerome yelled out again, as the boulder rumbled on, kicking up gusts of dust and beginning to bounce and jig over the rocky path, spitting out pebbles to each side as it shook the hillside. “WHOA!”

“I don’t think,” Leo snarked, stroking his hairy chin while wearing a time-served ‘told you so’ look on his face, “that boulders respond to the same commands as horses. Not this one, at any rate.”

“Seemingly not,” Jerome conceded. “Well, part II of the plan may require some situational refinement, but let’s get cracking on part I.”

Jerome strode into the cave, while Leo padded after him. Down below, a crushing thud suggested the boulder had finally been whoa-ed by an even more immovable object on the valley floor below, as Jerome’s anguished shouts echoed back from the canyon walls. That, at least, is what they assumed the seemingly human calls floating through the mouth of the cave must be.

****

The Vizier’s instructions had, he felt, been simple enough for even the Captain of the Palace Guard to comprehend. Head north into the Looming Mountains. Meet the surveyors at the base camp, then follow their directions to the newly discovered cave. Draw up a brief status report on the situation within, checking for signs of disturbance. Roll a boulder over the entrance, then return to the Palace.

As they marched south towards the city, Captain Mekldrak congratulated himself on a successful mission, completed to the letter. Perhaps a commendation would be forthcoming. Or better still, an extra wineskin in his weekly rations.

He had dutifully led his troops northwards, liaised with the surveyors at the camp, continued along the mountain trail to the cave – without a hitch or misstep, he might add – blocked off the mouth with the largest boulder they could find and…

“Oh, Pluto’s bollocks!”

His voice rebounded in mocking chorus from the rock faces on either side: “bollocks, bollocks, bollocks…”

“Captain?” enquired his equerry.

“The bloody report. The status report.”

“Oh. Yes. We kind of forgot that bit, didn’t we?”

“You forgot! That was specifically your task, as company clerk!”

“I was only following your orders, Sir! You told us to block it off with the boulder.”

“Well it’s no use arguing about it now. If we don’t present that report on the cave, with full sketches and squiggles, the Vizier will have my – or hopefully your – bollocks for a bloody bowtie!”

“Bloody bowtie, bloody bowtie, bloody bowtie…” the canyon concurred. Which was odd, as bowties wouldn’t be invented for another thousand years or more.

“Company! About face!”

And with that, he marched them all the way back up again.

Or would have done had it not been for the massive and palpably movable rock which suddenly appeared around a bend in the gully, caroming off the walls, dislodging splintered scree and screeching vultures as it rolled right for them.

“Oh, Pluto’s boulders!” Captain Mekldrak yelled, as his day went from bad to infinitely worse. The troops skittled left and right, while the overladen pack mule stood frozen in its tracks, before rapidly ascending to the great stable on high to munch on the hay celestial for all eternity.

“THUD!” said the boulder.

“Thud,” agreed the canyon.

“Whoever had the job of wedging that boulder in place is going to wish they had just been crushed to military-issue jam, so help me Jove!” Mekldrak threatened.

“Still, looking on the bright side,” cajoled his number two, “at least we won’t have to shift the boulder when we get back to the top of that hill, Captain.”

Mekldrak stared hard, blinked harder, let out an exasperated sigh that could have breathed life into a becalmed fleet of galleys, and began to trudge back up the trail.

“Forwards, men!” he called, as he led them back the way they had just come.

****

“Right! Write!” enthused Jerome.

“Right now,” Leo demurred, “I suggest is the right time to eat. Trekking across deserts and shifting monumental boulders is thirsty and hungry work.”

“But the glyphs!”

“Jerome, Jerome, Jerome,” pacified a practised Leo, “they have been there for a thousand years…”

“Two thousand, probably. They would be from the Urshal dynasty I should think, which would mean…”

“Two thousand years, then. So I’m sure they can wait another half hour for a combined breakfast, elevenses, brunch and lunch. If you would care to do the honours and break open the knapsack. Bagsy the lion’s share!”

“As if that needed saying! Very well. We eat, and then we get cracking on those texts.”

“Relax, Jerome. They’re not going anywhere. And neither are we, until after a nice, long nap.”

****

“It wasn’t our fault after all, Captain,” hissed a relieved sergeant as he snuck back from a solo recce of the scene. “It didn’t just roll down the hill – someone levered it open. Someone’s broken into the cave!”

The Captain, accustomed to thinking two steps ahead, and inevitably finding a displeased Vizier staring down at him, twiddling his moustache, was not nearly so relieved. His anything-for-an-easy-life mind had already sketched out a satisfyingly terse status report:

‘Cave = inspected. Signs of note = none. Entrance = sealed. Mission = accomplished. PS: Extra weekly wineskin = greatly appreciated. Grd. Capt., 1st Cls., Mekldrak.’

‘Intruders in flagrant breach of explicit imperial decree = unknown quantity and provenance’ was unlikely to elicit the same effect on the Vizierial visage.

Whoever this band of boulder-hurling desperado cave-robbers or glyph-tracers or hobbyist archaeologists were, he was going to have to take them in, and hope the bounty outweighed the imperial displeasure.

“Swords drawn, men. Prepare for combat – these are crazed outlaws. Sarge?”

“Sneak in, have a quick shufti, try not to lose my legs to a boobytrap or my jugular to an ambush?”

“Your Empress expects, Sergeant!”

A fatalistic shrug was the sergeant’s only reply as he tiptoed forward to peek around the entrance of the cave. He poked his nose into the tunnel, his eyes reluctantly following close behind, by force of anatomy more than volition.

Leo was picking a tough bit of biltong from between two incisors as the sergeant rounded the corner and came face to face with him – or rather face to gaping maw.

For the second time today, Sarge was hugely relieved at his discovery, as evidenced by a pungently spreading dark patch in his britches. But before he could turn tail and let his bladder tell its own sorry tale, Leo noticed the new arrival.

“We have company. What a quaint surprise!”

This was all too much for Sarge. A lion was one thing. A talking lion? Whatever the empress paid him, it wasn’t enough to deal with this. He’d be having a stern word with the union rep when he got back to the city. If he got back to the city. Which at that moment looked like a very poor bet to take.

He ventured a couple of backward steps, saw that the unexpected feline was making no attempt to follow him, span on his heels and dashed back to rejoin his comrades, generating enough of a breeze to begin drying off his soiled britches.

“There… is…,” he ch-ch-chattered through his teeth when he made it back to base, “a LION!”

“What? Where?” asked the captain, who on the balance of probability saw ‘lying’ as a more likely eventuality than an actual ‘lion’.

“In… the… cave!” hissed Sarge, wondering how acute an average lion’s hearing might be, and how close behind this particular specimen was.

The sight and smell of Sarge’s uniform was enough to convince the assembled troops that something had scared the breakfast out of him. Maybe it really was a lion, which might require a change of approach. The captain scratched his head and delved into his mental files of military academy training for any entry entitled ‘Lions, catching of; field tactics’.

“Of course!” he proclaimed with remarkable certainty after a few seconds. “Grab it by the tail! That’s the thing!”

“Erm, Captain,” Sarge suggested, “I think that’s tigers.”

“Tigers, lions, all the same. Claws, fangs, fur. Man-eating killing machines. Bound to work.”

“Also, Captain, I seem to remember it being noted as a Very Bad Idea.”

“Well do you have a better one?”

“How about a net? We sweep the area for allied mice first, of course…”

“Mice?”

“In case they gnaw through it – fatal flaw in lion-netting missions. Classic cadet error, Captain.”

“Right…”

“Then catch the lion in the net, string it up on a long pole, and march back to the Palace.”

“And where do we get a net? We didn’t come equipped for zoological specimen-gathering, Sergeant,” quibbled the captain.

“We make one. There’s plenty of rope tying up the supplies on the pack mule that we could… Oh…”

“Precisely. No, there’s only one thing for it, men. Full frontal assault!”

“Might I suggest a surreptitious full frontal assault, Captain,” invited Sarge. “Softly, softly catchee… Oh, that’s monkeys, isn’t it? Anyway, we can sneak up on him and pounce before we get pounced, so to speak.”

“Very sensible, Sergeant. Lead on. And do change that uniform when we get back to barracks – we’re all downwind of you now.”

****

Inside the cave, Leo had relayed news of the arrivals to Jerome, who was unimpressed by this further distraction.

“Palace guards? Out here in the desert? What on earth do they want?” he wondered. “We’d better go and see. And then I might finally get a chance to study these texts before the passage of another millennium erodes them entirely.”

The two of them headed to the entrance and stepped outside into the dazzling desert light, to find they were ringed by armed troops. As their eyes adjusted to the brightness, they seemed to make out ten, perhaps a dozen swords glinting in the sun, all pointing straight at them.

“They don’t seem very friendly, do they?” ventured Leo.

“Oh, I’m sure we can talk this over, whatever the problem is,” Jerome replied, stepping forward to greet the captain, whose form had now resolved into focus.

“Stop right there!” the captain barked. “Put your staff slowly down on the ground where I can see it, drop your weapons, retract your claws, and put your hands and/or paws in the air. You are surrounded.”

“So I see,” concurred Jerome, propping his staff against a rock. “May I ask why?”

The captain reached into a pouch and extracted a scroll of papyrus. He unrolled the text, traced over a few lines with a pudgy forefinger, and recounted: “Breach of Imperial Decree 317 of Calendar Year 408: No citizen shall, on pain of imprisonment in perpetuity, enter the newly discovered archaeological heritage site designated as the Cave of the Ancients in the Looming Mountains to make any copy, trace, likeness or simulacrum of the sacred texts to be found therein.”

“I can assure you, Captain, that I have made no copy of any texts, sacred or profane,” argued Jerome, adding under his breath, “and if the incessant interruptions from this convocation of ignoramuses continue, nor shall I ever!”

“We shall see about that in due time,” replied the captain, returning to his charge scroll. “The perpetrators are furthermore suspected of: grand splat, pack mule; wilful destruction of palace property; reckless release of boulder with intent to endanger life.”

“You just made that last one up!” objected Leo.

“Anyway,” added Jerome, “we didn’t intend to endanger life. It’s just that, you know, moving boulders, steep slopes, narrow canyons… one cannot change the laws of physics, as dear old Archie would have said!”

“Save your arguments for the Vizier! You both come in quiet as mice,” the captain menaced, prodding the air with his sword like a schoolmaster with his cane, “or you come in quiet as the grave.”

He had been practising that theatrical threat for months, and was so delighted to finally get a chance to use it, he almost forgot to drop his voice an extra octave of gruffness, and pause for a beat and a half before the punchline.

“Very good, Captain!” Sarge congratulated him, simultaneously inflating and bursting his balloon of self-importance.

“We are scholars, not skirmishers, my good man. We shall accompany you to the Palace and attempt to reason with the Vizier. No blood need be spilled.”

Leo gave a look suggesting less than total agreement with his companion, but traipsed along regardless as they were escorted down the hill.

If you’ve made it this far, and actually enjoyed what you read, the rest of the novel is available as both ebook and print-on-demand paperback via various platforms.