Experience the heart-warming journey of NUMENCROEN, the gripping third installment to the GENOIVIEVE high fantasy series. This novel places you inside the intense intrigue of the dwarves. You live the extraordinary life of Numencroen, a young dwarf of royal heritage, born in exile and flung into a modest life filled with anxiety and despair. He slowly grows into the powerful ruler he was destined to be, and through many hardships, ultimately fulfills his destiny.

Numencroen is the very definition of honesty and integrity and eventually forms a powerful alliance with Genoivieve. Raised in modest circumstances, Genoivieve is the aspiring Grand Matriarch of Aphrodite and represents resilience and honor, demonstrating a unique goodness that inspires Numencroen. In an interesting comparison, Numencroen is a dwarf of prestigious royal heritage, but also grows up in similarly ordinary roots just like both Genoivieve and Ulmaetor did. We learn to sympathize with his inferiority complex, always afraid of being inept and poorly equipped to succeed. We see him gradually conquer these prodigious inner demons, and young Numencroen eventually discovers that his destiny as a dwarf king becomes interdependent with the human world. He walks along traditional themes of patience, honor, hard work, duty, honesty, courage and integrity. He is a survivor who manages to live up to the greatest of expectations.

NUMENCROEN retains the important themes of gender and race equality evident in all volumes of the GENOIVIEVE series. The stories make a strong case for attracting female readers in a genre that has long been male-dominated.

The world is huge. With expertly-crafted world building and a compelling, first-person narrative, Numencroen, like the other stories, is a mesmerizing tale accented with allegory and literary nuance. He is Volume 3 of the Genoivieve Series but can function well as a stand-alone story. As always, no AI support was employed in the written word or of any hand-drawn maps. Only the character images were AI enhanced from personal photographs. The story provides a genuine mosaic of classical lore, ideal for fans of high fantasy, contemporary fantasy and sword & sorcery role-playing alike, and represents a fine read, both within and outside of the genre.