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A King of Cartoons Kindle Edition
The all-powerful tech-conglomerate, House of Never has abducted his estranged son and liquidated his crusading charity. Now he’s on the run from their agents, fleeing the corrupt politics of Old York to the permanently frozen city state of Venice, onto the Candyland War and the Commonwealth of Swine, Tokyo’s exit-less Hotel Always and a never-ending street populated by digital refugees. He tumbles through cartoonishly distorted worlds searching for answers.
Why does House of Never want to destroy him?
Can he trust his fractured memories?
And is his quest for the truth causing reality to unravel at the seams?
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJuly 19, 2023
- File size1.5 MB
From the Publisher

A King of Cartoons
"An involving, deliberately hazy tale with a radiant, multispecies cast." - Kirkus Reviews
"Dazzlingly imaginative; a thrilling box of magic from an intelligent and distinctive voice." - Michael Marshall Smith, New York Times Bestselling author.

Welcome to Old York.
So, want to watch again?
You do?
Okay, follow me and we’ll find a place to begin. Dramatists are urged to open their tales in the middle of the action. With my story, that’s problematic. Never mind; this moment will suffice. It’s where I usually choose to begin. It isn’t the start, but the start is rarely the beginning, if you follow my drift. You don’t? Don’t worry, you will eventually.

Say hello to Abraham Keen
This is our destination. We swoop down towards its entrance where a jovial concierge welcomes a steady stream of arrivals climbing from limousines. Where are they heading? Up we fly, towards heaven, windows a blur, until we reach the vast penthouse complex where the building’s owner resides: Abraham Keen, former hedonistic playboy turned liberal philanthropist, chairman of the Charity of the Dispossessed.

Captain Pinn is not happy
“I want to speak to whichever officer is responsible for this atrocity,” demanded Abraham, sounding considerably more in control of the situation than he felt. All around him, giant police officers moved with violent purpose. He remembered Finnegan’s warnings about their altered genetic makeup.

Lord Charles loves to party.
Lord Charles tittered; his voice inappropriately high for a beast of his size. He blew smoke upwards and swirled it with a paw mutated into a hairy human hand.

Old York

Abraham keen

Captain Pinn

Lord Charles

Venice City State: House of Never HQ
Abraham remembered the day when it had bought Venice. Only House of Never had the colossal financial muscle and scientific brilliance to save the drowning city. It became a question of sell or sink for the city fathers. Despite their sorrow at having to hand over their city to such a rapacious conglomerate, their pride was such that they could not bear to preside over its demise. And so, Venice was sold to House of Never. Within half a dozen years, Venice had become House of Never, their names inseparable. The vast dome erected over the city allowed the creation of a perpetual artificial winter. Venice was frozen in place, denying the eroding waters the last few years it required to claim this merchant city and its history.

Annie knows more than she should.
Annie lit a cigarette and puffed out a line of smoke exclamation marks. “No hello? Or, nice to see you again, how did you sleep?”
“This place isn’t conducive to small talk.”
“Agreed. But would they expect us to meet here?”
“They?”
“Later.”

Ms Harriman, possible the most powerful human alive.
Isabelle Harriman was no more than five and half feet tall and wand thin. Long black hair spilled over tanned shoulders that were uncovered except for the thin straps supporting an elegantly simple black sheath dress that ended just above her knees. She tilted her head, smiled widely all perfect white teeth and healthy gums, and regarded him with cold, pale green eyes. The absence of any shoes on her dainty feet added a vulnerable counterpoint. Another wave of her scent filled is nostrils and his senses seemed to throb.

Joe is lost.
“My name is Liberator. You’ve been expecting a message from me. I hoped it would be in more favourable circumstances, but that cannot be helped. The war is lost, but I have important news regarding your son, Joe. You must meet me in the Shadow Corner of the park at midnight. I will wait for five minutes only.”

Venice City State: House of Never HQ

Annie Keen

Ms Harriman

Joe Keen

Welcome to Candyland.
Candyland was established in mid-state Florida. It was a mini country in its own right, with villages and towns manufactured from candy. Now you could head for your favourite flavoured city: Honey Point, Strawberry Cream City, St Pistachio or a hundred others, and feed until you puked. Added to this were the candy people. Using the emergent chip technologies used to give personality and memory to animals in the Confabulatory Cuisine movement, a population of talking candy people moved into these cities, filling the roles of tour guides, bellboys, hostesses and entertainers. And, of course, they acted as an extra source of candy. The candies would put on a juggling extravaganza, show you round their village and then invite you into their home to dine on their children.

From sergeant to freedom fighter.
“I know that, Hoops. But we aren’t going to be asking for a ride back to base. We’re going to take a ‘copter for ourselves. Just like we talked about before,” said Boise.
“We going to the Ranch, really, sergeant?” asked Hoops.
“Yep. And don’t call me sergeant no more. I’m Boise now. We’ve all just resigned from the army. We’re free pigs now. Isn’t that right, Abraham?” Boise made the tick sign in the air.

The loyal tomfool
They made it to the landing site within a couple of minutes. Two of the three attack ships were nothing but burning wrecks, and there was no sign of their crews. The third helicopter was intact. Its pilot and crew had been neatly garrotted and laid out alongside it. Carefully, Abraham and the pigs entered the clearing. There was no sign of the crew’s assassins.
“Weird,” said Hoops.

A pig with a heart of gold
“My name’s Humphrey Bogart,” said the pig. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
Abraham shook the trotter. Strange fingers, more like hard hide than flesh, curled around his own fingers.
“Despite what I’ve been told, I’m afraid I can’t remember my name. But it’s good to meet you, Humphrey.”
“Yep, you was lucky. I saw that bullet clip you good.” Humphrey quickly looked around the interior of the helicopter and then, leaning toward Abraham, he pulled a wrap of paper from pocket. He unwrapped it carefully to reveal a multicoloured powder. “Want some TB?”

Candyland creatures

Boise

Hoops

Humphrey Bogart

Early Reviews of the Hotel Always
…was certainly no disappointment. And the guest will always be able to say that the hotel supplied a different angle on their visit to Tokyo. The hotel is big on angles. Some of them have more than 360 degrees. Hey, that’s four-dimensional hotels for you…
…a very interesting byproduct of the quantum feng shui engine is the occasional dislocation of cause and effect. On entering the hotel, your intrepid reviewer suffered a terrible pain on his forehead, followed by the swift development of a sizable lump. I was informed by a helpful member of staff that I would encounter the cause at some point during my stay. Sure enough, that evening, bending to retrieve an errant sock, I bashed my head violently against my bedroom table and felt not a thing…

Mr Yohi, again.
“Welcome to the Hotel Always, Tokyo!” said the man, opening his arms wide. “It is our express pleasure to receive you. My name is Mr—”
“Yohi?” interrupted Abraham, remembering Venice and talk of witches and bodies encased by ice.
“At your service, honoured guest,” said the man, bowing again.

A man of extremes and secrets.
“The sky is just so big, and those clouds are just so…” The man flapped his arms as he sought for adjectives. “So… heavenly. I want to dive into them and swim celestial. Know what I mean?”
“Oh God, he’s worse than the parakeet,” muttered Boise, and Abraham flashed him a scowl.
“Are you the Ecstatic?”
“Every day and every night I live my life outta sight,” sang the man, then bowed. “I am he – Mr Ecstatic Man.”

Can what is lost ever be found?
Abraham has been here before, which helps, and it certainly isn’t the total dislocation of the tunnel of pattern and colour. But it still has its own frustrations and obstacles. The obstacles are mainly people. Thousands of them crammed into this ramshackle shanty world. It’s an energetic world, full of push and shove, barter and haggle, fist and fight, hover and flight.

The Hotel Always, Tokyo

Mr Yohi

The Ecstatic

The Street of Lost Souls
Product details
- ASIN : B0C6QTVDM1
- Accessibility : Learn more
- Publication date : July 19, 2023
- Language : English
- File size : 1.5 MB
- Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 383 pages
- Page Flip : Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,449,153 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,166 in Steampunk Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #1,432 in Steampunk Fiction
- #1,753 in Metaphysical Science Fiction eBooks
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Simon Paul Woodward is a horror writer based in London, UK. He’s a member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and the British Fantasy Society (BFS) and has won the BFS short story competition. His novels and short story collections have received plaudits from bestselling authors and his short fiction has appeared in magazines in the UK and USA.
You can visit him at www.simonpaulwoodward.com
Customer reviews
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2023Format: KindleVerified PurchaseIf you're a fan of some of the more twisted, sick, and ingenious episodes of Black Mirror you'll love this new novel by Simon Woodward.
Welcome to a twisted, dystopian world in which genetically modified pigs and sherbet skeletons battle it out, as pawns for a mega corporation with insidious control over the world.
Pill dreams are the updated soma of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, designed to keep a population placid: a kind of augmented virtual reality which allows you, among other things, to "meet a sexy celebrity for an illicit lunchtime of lust".
But read the small print: "All Pill Dreams may lead to death, disease, disability, mental health issues, sexual deviance or impotence. Please enjoy pill dreams responsibly." This is a classic example of the black wit which runs through this disturbing, but highly amusing and darkly entertaining new novel.
When you've awoken from your pill dream, try "confabulatory cuisine": a step beyond the live lobster bar: here animated animals invite you to eat them. Our main character Abraham is pursued by a chicken "squeezing its breasts, inviting him to imagine how juicy they were."
Another customer "puffing on a cigar that produced smoke dollar signs" is quizzing a lamb "wearing a pink dress and sitting on a high-backed chair" on her diet before deciding whether or not to eat her. Oh yes, and the agneau is French-speaking, naturally...
One of my favourite sections of the book is the story of how Candyland was invented as an independent state built in response to a new wonder drug in which people could eat everything they wanted without putting on weight (until they withered away and died, but that was a hidden side effect not envisaged by the inventors).
Streets are paved not with gold but sugar, toffee and all things sweet. "Candy people moved into these cities, filling the roles of tour guides, bellboys, hostesses and entertainers... the candies would put on a juggling extravaganza, show you around their village and then invite you into their home to dine on their children."
A futuristic playground for a human used to having it all and eating it: why does this make me think of Saudi Arabia and their plans for the mega city of Neom?
There are glimpses of Artificial Intelligence, and guess what, those glimpses are not encouraging: Abraham is slung back through history to join a group of pig soldiers, who like the sweet people are fitted with AI chips which go horribly wrong, resulting in the Candyland wars.
"The assault had foundered for a moment- dismembered and decapitated candy people, lying in puddles of syrup and jam, covered the ground in front of the wall, the sickly smell of burnt sugar filled the air."
One of the most disturbing elements of this war are the two-faced Straitjackets, a typically Woodwardian twist on reality, in this case human shields.
"One hideous face with a vividly animated, huge mouth was situated on their chest and then a normal human face, where a human face should be, surrounded by a balaclava of candy. The real faces were screaming... Abraham could hear the screams of the closest straitjacket: 'Please shoot, please shoot'."
The most terrifying aspect of all this is we see the story through the eyes of Abraham, in search of his dead wife (or is she still alive?) and renegade son.
He returns to a past where he knows how the story is going to end, but unlike your typical superhero, he can do nothing to change the course of history, or save his newfound friends and protectors like the heroic pig soldier Sergeant Boise from their terrible fate.
Woodward has long been a superb writer of fiction and short stories for teenagers and young adults, but this should appeal to mature horror and SF fans and, with its clever nods to Huxley and Orwell, deserves to bring him a whole new audience.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2023Format: PaperbackDear reader, put on your safety belt, set up your safety net, put on your lucky socks and dive deep into the wonderfuly crazy and dangerous world that Simon Paul Woodward created for your reading pleasure.
As Halloween draws near and dark winter nights crawl in, this absolute treat will keep you good company while you are nailed to your reading seat.
Enter the world of Abraham Keen. A world under attack.
The all-powerful tech-conglomerate, House of Never has abducted his estranged son and liquidated his crusading charity.
Now he's on the run from their agents, fleeing the corrupt politics of Old York to the permanently frozen city state of Venice, onto the Candyland War and the Commonwealth of Swine, Tokyo's exit-less Hotel Always and a never-ending street populated by digital refugees.
He tumbles through cartoonishly distorted worlds searching for answers.
Why does House of Never want to destroy
him? Can he trust his fractured memories? And is his quest for the truth causing reality to unravel at the seams?"
Dear reader, from the very moment you get your hands on this truly wonderful, inventive and dark read, you get immersed into a world of wonders. Correction, worlds of wonders.
The writing is beautiful and inventive, the style unique and beautifully cinematic. Thought it is not horror, the author managed to blend beautifully an array of genres that stretch from high fantasy to dystopian and from steampunk to thriller making this a phenomenal read begging to be made into a movie (like most of the author's stories).
This is by far, one of the most exciting books I've read in 2023 so far. Once again the author has delivered a masterpiece in the form of a modern fable. One that I will definitely re-read veeeery soon.
Top reviews from other countries
- Mr WoodReviewed in the United Kingdom on September 2, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars Five stars..from a brilliant writer.
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseI am still dipping my toes into the literally fiction pool, finding out what works for me and what doesn’t. Books like a King of Cartoons are definitely my cup of tea and you won’t be disappointed with this imaginative read. Buy it now..
- Fink NottleReviewed in the United Kingdom on September 5, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended sci-fi romp
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseA layered, bleak but comic, rollercoaster ride where the lines between the real (if it exists) and virtual realities are criss-crossed and blurred. Highly recommended…and the pigs are a real treat!
- Elizabeth Joan RussellReviewed in the United Kingdom on September 2, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read!
Format: KindleVerified PurchaseI loved this book. It’s bursting with ideas, super-fast paced and blackly comic. It’d make a great TV show or movie!
- avidreaderReviewed in the United Kingdom on July 23, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars Truly inventive - a terrific read
Format: KindleVerified PurchaseMind boggling storytelling from Simon Paul Woodward. The inventiveness in ‘A King of Cartoons’ is off the scale: murderous candies, soldier pigs, not to mention four dimensional Feng Shui - all set in a rollercoaster of a plot that keeps the reader guessing and slightly off-balance throughout. A terrific read!