After lunch, we went to the Giant Robot Poop.

“Quick, do a feminist deconstruction of this book cover,” P. said, waggling a trade paperback at me.

“Ummm…”

The title read The Pretender’s Crown. It looked like your typical fantasy cover for a novel set in some vaguely Medieval time and place–big tits in a velvet dress holding a crossbow thingie. Surely the story would concern a plucky heroine who would cutely meet some rogue, misunderstandings would occur, and she would off some bad guys with darts tipped with poison that she had been trained from childhood to ooze out of her vaginal walls. Lucky for her, the rake was IMMUNE. There will be a sequence on a ship, a crusty father figure who will declare the heroine’s spirit untameable, and she and Rake will knock boots in the sequel.

Wait, did I just write a book there?

“Eh, it’s not so bad, actually,” I admitted. “You can see HALF her head, even. The model does not look ridiculously emaciated. It’s ooookay.”

“Look,” P. said, and showed me the giant dent in the spine that appeared to be evidence that someone had twisted or bent the book at some point.

“Hmm, looks like it got jammed into a bag or something,” I remarked.

“I dunno,” P. said. “I bet someone did that on PURPOSE. I bet this book is really really really really terrible.”

“Oh just GET it already,” I said.

“Okay.”

We checked out and he walked me back to work in the mist.

“What if you picked this up and you got SUCKED IN and you COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN?” he said.

I scoffed. “I have already read that book,” I said.

“You DID? When? How is it?”

“Yes, it was a couple of years ago, and it was called The Princess Assassin then.”

“Oh, I see what you did there,” he said, and we had a laugh about it. Then he got quiet.

“Anyway,” he said. “It was called The DECOY Princess.”

“Oh, my bads.”