At one point in the book one of the heroine's companions is so exasperated by her continual bawling that she gives her a chicken in the hope that this will silence her sobs. Unaccountably, this works, and everyone in their dorm can at last get to sleep. I shall have to try this on my granddaughter when she is in one of her moods.

I don't remember there being so much tremulous soul-searching, or copious weeping in the first volume, but perhaps I skipped it. I skipped quite a lot of this one. This book is to be avoided if you are a mouse, lory or dodo.

The tale is an allegory of the USA under Trump. The government is taken over by a racist supremacist cabal, and the heroine joins The Resistance, fighting a rearguard action against the disenfranchisement and oppression of several minority groups. The reader is led to believe that all will come good in the third volume, when the forces of evil will be defeated by awesome fireballs and an angel.