The Alchemaster's Apprentice/YMMV

• Complete Monster: Ghoolion, for all his Affably Evil moments eventually reveals himself as one. The Snow-White Widow is a more obvious one.
• Moral Event Horizon: Though Ghoolion comes close to crossing it several times over the course of the story, he doesn't actually do so until very late in the story, when he kills Izanuela, after first having spent a long time fooling both her, Echo and the readers into thinking he was in love with her, revealing that he's been toying with both Echo and Izanuela all this time. Not surprisingly, he doesn't live for very long after this.
• Nightmare Fuel: Typically of Walter Moers, there are a few particularly disturbing moments and concepts:
  • The Agony Candles, one of Ghoolion's invensions -- basically a living candle that can feel pain and spends its entire existence crying in agony as it burns down. Ghoolion lights his laboratory with them, and anyone with good enough hearing can hear their constant agonized groans as they slowly burn to death.
  • The Snow-White Widow. Called the Queen of Fear, she's the deadliest creature in the book, and Ghoolion, true to form, describes her forms of killing helpless individuals quite lavishly.
  • The entire premise of the book is Nightmare Fuel. Living with an evil alchemist who makes no secret of the fact that when the month is over he's going to kill you and boil you down for your fat?