Lanceheim Book

A fast-paced literary and psychological drama in which the trials and tribulations of a group of stuffed animals illuminate the moral and philosophical dilemmas we all share

While finishing what was to be his greatest symphony, famed composer Reuben Walrus discovers he is going deaf. Desperate to stave off the encroaching silence, he embarks on an odyssey to find a fabled creature named Maximilian, rumored to have healing powers but only traceable via an underground network. But as Reuben gets closer to the truth, he must ask himself: Just who—or what—is Maximilian?

The story of the legendary creature is recorded by Wolf Diaz, Maximilian's oldest friend and most loyal follower. Oddly, unlike the other stuffed animals of Mollisan Town, Maximilian did not arrive by green delivery truck. He cannot be identified as any particular species and is made from a material unlike any other with almost invisible seams. And most puzzling, he grows in size. As Maximilian matures, he begins to preach odd parables, attracting a legion of followers hoping to learn from his teachings. But his believers aren't the only stuffed animals paying attention as his growing influence threatens the power of the darker forces currently ruling Mollisan Town. Now Maximilian is in hiding . . . and time is running out for Reuben to find him. As his search widens, the composer encounters a detective mouse, a giraffe who swears Maximilian miraculously cured his stomach cancer, and a mink who may hold the key to Reuben's salvation. But it's a race against time as Reuben's world steadily goes silent, and his desperation may ultimately lead to his undoing.

With biting prose and compelling plot twists, Lanceheim is a tour de force all the way to the last sentence, as the true natures of Wolf Diaz, Reuben Walrus, and Maximilian are uncovered. Through the stuffed animals living in the imaginative world he introduced in the critically acclaimed Amberville, Tim Davys explores the hopes and fears, strengths and weaknesses, that define humanity as he pens a story that is both gripping and extraordinary.

Publishers Weekly

In the pseudonymous Davys's dithering second novel set in a world populated by stuffed animals (after Amberville), composer Reuben Walrus is weeks away from finishing his new symphonic opus when he discovers that his irreversible hearing loss will be total before he can complete the task. His only hope is to seek the aid of Maximilian, a parable-spouting sage whose growing cult of followers has so alarmed authorities and deacons of the world's orthodox church that they have driven him underground. Davys alternates between the trials and tribulations of Reuben as he copes with his affliction, and the life, times, and persecution of the enigmatic Maximilian, but the two narrative threads converge so belatedly that the plot never coheres. The stuffed animal conceit adds little to a story whose characters are so tritely human that readers may find themselves wondering why the author even bothered to cast it with fantasy surrogates. (June)