0505Helen_Pratchett

A retelling of Goethe's Faust, the novel follows a teenage boy named Eric as he forayed into black magic. For one of his three wishes granted by a wizard trapped in the Dungeon Dimensions, he wished to meet the most beautiful woman in the world. The woman, named Elanor, was the catalyst for a ten-year war between the fictional countries of Ephebe and Tsort, and was said in the stories that followed the war to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

By the time Eric met Elanor, however, the war had been raging for many years, so she had settled in, settled down, had a few kids, and let herself go. Upon expressing his diappointment, Eric was told that stories often exaggerated the beauty of these mythical women, because no one wants to read a story about a war that was waged for a slightly below-average looking woman.

Slide by CB