The Banned Underground Series

'Tolkein meets Spinal Tap!' The first volume in The Banned Underground collection of stories that can be read in any order, or disorder.  Perhaps disorder, for when two suburban teenagers arrive for an enforced holiday at their aunt’s cottage, they find a lot more going on than they expected. Most of the local Wizards and Witches are all on holiday – sorry, that’s the Annual Joint Professional Conference of course – in the South of France. It’s a perfect opportunity for the local Dark Lord (who has been left behind) to summon up some goblins and try to invade the underground Mansion of the Dwarves. Can the teenagers help their new friend the King of the Dwarves save his kingdom?  The Dark Lord has his goblins and his minions; the teenagers have a luminous green, jazz-loving bog troll and his rhythm-and-blues band – and an amazing collection of jokes, one-liners, and awfully bad puns, as this new fantasy series gets off to a crackling start.

‘Tolkien Meets Spinal Tap!’ The Mystic Accountants is the second outing for the dwarf rhythm-and-blues band and their jazz-loving, saxophone-playing bog troll leader.  They are about to acquire a new band member too, but quite by accident.  After all, they hadn’t planned to demolish the mystical Throne of the Dwarf King under the Mountain during one of their gigs, had they?  But the choice of punishment was easy: get locked up or go on a more-or-less paid-for quest to find another Throne. The Quest takes them across Wales, unexpectedly by way of various pubs and a beer festival, until they find … well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?  And the Quest isn’t going to be as easy as it sounds either. The Dark Lord wants to intercept the Throne for purposes of his own, and his minions are in hot pursuit, until they run into a conspiracy to take over the nation of Wales by some Mad Monks. Will the King of the Dwarves sit on a Throne again?  Will the Dark Lord triumph? And will the Mad Monks gain control of the country? (They couldn’t do a worse job than the politicians, I suppose.) Find out in this fast-moving, wisecracking, pun-filled satire on fantasy adventure quests.

'Tolkien meets Spinal Tap!'  The third stand-alone volume in The Banned Underground fantasy collection finds our friends – the dwarf rhythm-and-blues band known as The Banned Underground – in trouble again. For once, they can claim that it wasn’t their fault.  After all, they didn’t suggest Santa’s Little Helpers should borrow The Sleigh to get to their gig whilst Santa is on his summer cruise, did they?  And they certainly didn’t crash The Sleigh into a mountain in Wales on the way, did they?  But they can’t let their friends down, so the Banned are on hand to help get The Sleigh repaired—by the only remaining mechanic who has a workshop manual.  After all, Vampires don’t throw things like that away. However, The Sleigh has triggered computer alerts around the world, and one such alert was on the Dark Lord’s computer.  As his Mercedes has seen better days, the Dark Lord sends out his minions with orders to recover The Sleigh to be his new personal transport. Warlocks, Druids, Vampires and Witches (and the occasional accidental frog) combine in a laugh-a-minute roller coaster as the Banned struggle to save their friends from the wrath of Santa.    This is a great entry to a fantastically funny collection described as 'Lord of The Rings as written by a stand up comedian to a Led Zeppelin soundtrack'

'Tolkien meets Spinal Tap!' Once again, the Dark Lord has a cunning plan. And once again someone else is going to have to carry it out for him: that's what henchmen are for, isn't it? To hench? Oh, and to be sent on the risky missions… Not that this one should be risky. What could be easier than secretly inserting computer spyware into a laptop, using a Banned Underground gig as a diversion? The Tax Office probably does it all the time. But the Tax Office is not normally being chased for an unpaid credit card bill for a huge round of drinks. (That's the politicians. And the henchmen, of course.) And it isn't just any laptop the Dark Lord wants to spy on either. The Government is struggling to find the way out of the Recession without a road map, and what better aid than a SatNav linked to a computer? If the Dark Lord can get inside information on future economic policy, maybe he can clean up and buy a new Mercedes. Then there is a mystery: where did the time-travelling SatNav come from in the first place? What if the original owner wants it back? Magic, mayhem and macro-economic policy collide in the latest surreal instalment of the acclaimed hilarious fantasy series, The Banned Underground.

'Tolkien meets Spinal Tap!' More speculative fiction from The Banned Underground collection: in this sixth outing for the series Grizelda (the off-white witch) is forced to speculate about her future in fiction when the Dark Lord tempts her with his cookies, and then threatens her with eviction from her cottage if she doesn’t join The Dark Side. Tempted, Grizelda sets off on a journey of self-discovery, but whatever is she likely to find, apart of course from a few frogs? Is it Good to be Bad? Or is it Bad to be Good?  Or could there be a Third Way? Frogs, Vampires, and assorted witches and wizards all have a different view on her predicament, and the only certainty is Grizelda’s uncertainty … and the usual stream of gags, one-liners and slapstick jokes provoked by her thoughts on philosophy. ‘Lord Of The Rings as written by a stand up comedian to the soundtrack of Led Zeppelin IV’ said a reviewer on The Guardian’s Books page.