SEA-CAT AND DRAGON KING

“It is a little-known fact that cats live at the bottom of the sea. Everything at the bottom of the sea is just the same as it is on land—except, of course, that it is quite different.” So begins a posthumous bit of fluff from adult writer Carter, about an ugly sea-dragon who kidnaps a young sea-cat, then gets a new self-image to go with a new outfit made from seaweed and rubies. There’s not much there there to begin with, and the publishers haven’t done the brief tale any favors, illustrating passages like, “When the suit was finished, it glowed like flowers in sunshine. It glowed like port wine in the glass. It glowed like the rose window in a cathedral” with crudely drawn, black-and-white sketches. This small fable is definitely a change of pace from Carter’s psychosexual novels and retold folktales, but it’s more about style than substance. (Fiction. 8-10)