John Gardner here creates a magical and mysterious world, a world of tales spun within tales, of dragons and talking babes and kings who have 12 daughters, each more beautifiul than the last, a world of sudden transformations and hidden significances in which Chudu the Goat's Son, and Armida the blacksmith's daughter, and Christopher the Sullen, crown prince of the kingdom, meet, by chance, in the Suicide Mountains (each, for anguishing reasons, intent on self-destruction) and there encounter the Abbot of the Ancient Monastery -- saintliest (and most enigmatic) of men -- who teaches them that things are not always as they seem.