The kingdom of Gwytthenia is in peril. A plague has festered and has transformed the once beautiful land into one of dearth and danger. After years of exile in His castle and feeling like an unwelcome stranger in his own land, the good King sends trusted emissaries to our world in order to fetch a hero.

Enter Samuel Christopher McCubbins: an extraordinary boy who is handsome, brave, smart, well-liked, and everything a hero should be.

But this story is not about Samuel.

For from the bed where Samuel should be, the king’s emissaries find and abscond with Samuel’s cousin, Albert, a boy who is -by anyone’s estimation, including his own- absolutely normal.

When Albert wakes up, he is stranded, hurt, and alone in a snowbank. There, he is discovered by a gruff but loveable penguin named Malarkey. Once he has nursed Albert back to health, Malarkey tells Albert to find the King and ask why he was brought here.

This simple, straightforward quest on which Malarkey sends Albert turns out to be, well, malarkey. Instead, Albert finds himself facing one disaster after another: giant spiders, monsters of many heads, and near starvation in the crossings of a wilderness, among other dangers. Yet, through it all he perseveres, finding friendship and kindness in the uncanny forms of dwarves obsessed with 1950’s Americana, flying bears, fierce warrior women, and many others.

The Incredible Adventures of Absolutely Normal is an old-fashioned fairytale, reminiscent of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. It lays out for readers the making of a hero and shows them how strength lies within us all, if only we have the courage to look for it.