Rumo and His Miraculous Adventures

Rumo and his Miraculous Adventures (Rumo for short) is a book by Walter Moers set in Zamonia, the setting for The Thirteen and A Half Lives of Captain Bluebear and The City of Dreaming Books. It revolves around Rumo, a wolperting (a intelligent, bipedal, horned dog), after he is kidnapped by cyclopean pirates. Following his escape from them, he sets off on a journey to find 'the silver thread' that will lead him to true love, but is waylaid repeatedly, most importantly when almost everyone he knows is kidnapped and taken to the hellish underground Netherworld, which he must rescue them from. Along the way he picks up several friends, including Dandelion and Krindle, the talking sword possessed by two very different spirits, Voltozan Smyke the shark grub, and Urs of the Snows, another wolperting and talented chef.

Tropes used in Rumo and His Miraculous Adventures include:

• Exclusively Evil: As always, there are some Zamonian races who lack any redeeming qualitites. The Demonocles are probably the worst, though -- their entire culture, such as it is, revolve around taking prisoners to eat them alive, making sure their victims stay alive for as long as possible because they like their food to struggle. Completely lacking in empathy unless it involves breaking a Demonocle's tongue; that's just taking it too far, they can't even begin to see anything wrong with this.
• Ax Crazy: Gornab the 99th, Ruler of Hel.
• Badass: Rumo, but all wolpertings are superb fighters.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Urs is a peaceful and kindly soul who doesn't care much for fighting and would rather spend his time cooking; he's viewed as a bit of a pushover by Rumo. Later on, however, he proves himself as one of the most formidable warriors in Wolperting: His reluctance to fight is for personal reasons, not because he isn't any good at it.
• Berserker Rage: Rolv's "White Fire."
• Blood Knight: General Tick-Tock. And how!
• Breakout Character: Rumo and Voltozan Smyke were both important minor characters in Walter Moers's previous book, The Thirteen and A Half Lives of Captain Bluebear.
• Catch Phrase: Rumo will say "I'm not good with words" as an excuse whenever he's called upon to tell a story or explain something to someone else. He first says it, once, in The Thirteen and A Half Lives of Captain Bluebear, but in this book he says it so often it's become his Catch Phrase.
• Clockwork Creature: General Tick-Tock and the Copper Killers.
• Coming of Age Story: We follow Rumo from his early childhood into his adult years.
• Condemned Contestant: All the contestants in the Theatre Of Death.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • Gornab is mostly extremely stupid, unhinged but docile, but is prone to sudden murderous rages that endanger everyone around him.
  • Only when Rumo has to defend himself for the first time as a grown wolperting he finds out how badass he is.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to the first Zamonia book.
• Dem Bones: The skeletal Yeti.
• Descriptive Ville: The wolpertings mainly live in the town of Wolperting. (They found it empty but otherwise ready to move in and named it appropriately.)
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Rumo kills a Lunawraith, a creature that feeds on life energy and was supposedly unstoppable. It turned out they have a breakable spinal chord.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Demonocles are consummate sadists who like their prey alive and screaming and will beat their buddies to death For the Evulz. Damage another Demonocle's tongue in front of them, and they all cringe in horrified shock.
• Evil Chancellor: Friftar, though he's not that much more evil than the people around him.
• Fantastic Voyage Plot: Near the end when the microscopic ships are injected into Rala to save her life.
• Genius Bruiser: Most Wolpertings are formidable fighters, but very intelligent, they are very talented chess fanatics for example. Rumo, however, is not the brightest person in the world.
• Genius Loci: The Nurn Forest Oak.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Ushan de Lucca dies so that Tick-Tock can't reach the other fighters to kill them.
  • Also The skeletal yeti prevent Gornab's conquest of the surface by collapsing a cave roof on top of themselves.
• I Have This Friend: The protagonist asks The Mentor what his friend Urs is supposed to do after falling in love with a girl. He's a Bad Liar and several times says "I" instead of "Urs". The mentor is nice enough not to mention -- at least at first, but he does eventually lose patience, especially since Rumo's situation was the talk of the town anyway and everybody knew about it.
• I'm a Humanitarian: The Demonocles.
• Nested Story: There are lots and lots and lots of stories-within-a-story in this book, and often there are stories within the stories-within-a-story. This is even Lampshaded by Smyke when he tells Rumo the story about the siege of Lindworm Castle. Since Rumo at this point is very young and knows next to nothing about the world, Smyke needs to include several other stories in order to explain the events of his primary one. At one point he remarks rather dryly that this is the third consecutive story he's had to tell, and he hasn't even gotten to the part about the siege yet.
• Our Homunculi Are Different: They are created in Hel from a massive vat and they are a mash-up of the various creatures thrown into the vat.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: At one point they fight a 7-foot long blind albino rat with tentacles. This is probably the least odd creature they encounter in Netherworld.
• The Plague: General Tick-Tock has one engineered, as ultimate weapon.
• Proud Warrior Race: Wolpertings are very talented fighters, which is why fighting is an important part of their culture and education. They don't seem to think slaughter is their life's calling, though, unlike the demons and the yeti.
• Red String of Fate: It is called the silver thread, and can actually be perceived by wolpertings from their early childhood; at that point they don't even know it's a romantic thing, they just have the notion that if they follow the silver thread to its source, something wonderful will be at the other end. Unfortunately, Rumo knows nothing about relationships or even what girls are until he arrives in Wolperting, so it's not as much use as you might think. Also, the trope is played with a bit, because while following the silver thread does lead to the wolperting's soulmate, it's by no means a given that it'll actually work out in the long run -- as exemplified by Urs, whose soulmate eventually left him.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Wolperting puppies are ridiculously cute, they even feed on love.
• Running Gag: To Rumo's steadily increasing annoyance, he shares his name with a popular Zamonian card game, and (with a few exceptions) every single person he introduces himself to will immediately mention this. Towards the end, he just snaps "yes, like the card game!" as soon as they open their mouths.
• To Hell and Back: All the wolpertings in the second half of the book.
• The Unintelligible: Gornab speaks so messed up, only his chancellor can understated him.
• Villainous Incest: Gornab is the result of generations of royal incest.
• Xenofiction: Wolpertings have a highly developed sense of smell. This comes into play quite a bit.