The Lizard Princess

The complex and gripping third part of the History of Arcadia (after Lily the Silent) sends a teenage girl on a Campbellian hero’s journey. When Sophia, queen of Arcadia at the young age of 15, is turned into a half-lizard by her mother’s murderer, she flees on a quest to recover the lost Key. Sophia, narrating her coming-of-age story from the end of her life, recalls her emotional growth as well as her physical trials. She observes how belief affects perception when she encounters her half-brother, Joe, and identifies the effect of environment on physical and emotional health as she travels through the Dead Wood to Megalopolis’s False Moon. The duality of the fairy tale Arcadia and the sterile technology of Megalopolis is mirrored in Sophia’s physical duality as the Lizard Princess. The power of all types of love gives the journey its foundation, even providing a basis for Davies’s occasionally unsubtle antitechnology philosophy. Newcomers to Arcadia will be captivated by the rich history, while those familiar with it will find that Sophia’s legend grants them a new perspective on the earlier tales. (Nov.)