After the anomaly in 'Asterix and Son' of the Romans finally succeeding in destroying our Gaulish village but then, because of the circumstances, rebuilding it again, we're back to normal for a new adventure. As the title and cover suggest, however, we'll be quickly off to the east, though quite a lot further than I expected. However, while the 'Arabian Nights' certainly seem like they ought to have happened in, well, Arabia, Prince Husain, the lead character in that particular story, bought his magic carpet in Bisnagar, India, and India is where we end up.

We get there courtesy of Watziznehm the Fakir, who unexpectedly plummets to the ground right next to Cacofonix's new hut, which Vitalstatistix is trying to chop down  to stop him singing. It was that singing, or "inhuman noises", as Watziznehm describes them, that caused him to crash. It's a lucky accident, because he was seeking "the village of madmen where a voice makes rain" and it's made very clear early on that Cacofonix has that power. In fact, just to prove he doesn't, he sings inside the chief's hut and it promptly rains indoors. "The rain in Gaul falls mainly down the wall."

The story is that the fakir's country around the Ganges is reliant on the monsoon season, when it hammers down for a couple of months and waters their crops. This year, it hasn't happened. They haven't had a drop of rain and, with the dry season imminent, that means famine. What's more, a guru called Hoodunnit has talked with the gods and explained that, if the monsoon season passes without any rain, then Princess Orinjade, lovely daughter of the Rajah Watzit, must be sacrificed to the gods. The only solution on offer thus far is the voice that makes rain, floated by a merchant who used to be a legionary, so obviously a reference that I'm annoyed I don't know who to.

Anyway, will Cacofonix be the hero of the day? We'll soon find out, because this time it isn't merely Asterix and Obelix who fly off with Watziznehm on a new quest; the bard gets to join them. It's an urgent quest, because Princess Orinjade (her maidservant is Lemuhnade) only had a thousand and one hours left to live when the fakir left the Ganges and he's been gone three weeks already. That means about halfway so they must get a serious move-on to get back in time. After all, Armorica is on the very western coast of France while the Ganges is most of the way across India. This journey will take them three times as far as they have been thus far in any 'Asterix' album.

Appropriately enough, most of the album is taken up by the journey. The setup takes seven pages and the journey unfolds over twenty, which leaves seventeen for whatever shenanigans we should expect in India. That takes us into the final page, because there's absolutely no space for getting back home again. Perhaps learning a lesson from the negative reception to his departure from an abiding tradition in 'Asterix and Son', Albert Uderzo does include a final panel banquet, though it must be said our heroes aren't there. They're enjoying a banquet of their own in India and Obelix is imagining what the one in the village must be like at that very moment. It's a fair midpoint.

There are some good times in India, with all the obvious cheap puns arrive just as we're expecting them, plenty of them having to do with monkeys. There's also a good grounding to the story, with Cacofonix getting there just in time (thirty hours, thirty minutes and thirty seconds to go) only to promptly lose his voice. He's been trying to sing for twenty-eight albums, but the very first time it is absolutely invited, he can't deliver. That's a powerful irony and with a princess's life on the line to boot. There's a cure, of course, which is suitably disgusting, and, wrapped up around that are a heady mixture of royal tigers, midair wizard duels and the elephant's graveyard.

However, the real fun happens along the way and Uderzo takes every opportunity to wander down memory lane. Initially, it's just to pass a Roman camp and ask for directions to Rome. Of course, it turns out that all roads lead there. There's a pirate encounter too, as tradition mandates, though they're really only stopping by for food this time and the pirates would have been absolutely fine had one not scuttled the ship by default a little too early. There's a Rome flyby, where they shoot past Julius Caesar, who's recovering from Asian flu, just as he's been seeing indomitable Gauls at every turn. And then they do the same over Athens, remembering the Olympic Games there.

There's still time for new stuff too, most of it playing into this new ability of Cacofonix to make it rain whenever he sings. That will be a good thing in India, to end a drought, but it's not so good in the middle of nowhere, when he feels the urge, prompts the heavens to open and the carpet falls into the ocean. They're picked up by a Greek merchant, Onthepremises, who's shocked by the rain as the local oracle, Metoffice, hadn't forecast any. That’s a peculiarly English pun, the Met Office, formerly the Meteorological Office, being the UK's national weather service.

There are plenty of very English puns here, all in translation, of course, but some are particularly appropriate for a story with an Indian theme. Given that the Indians love cricket even more than the Brits, it's absolute genius to name a character Owzat, for the traditional cry when... no, I will not get suckered into attempting to explain cricket in a book review! Howdoo, the senior trainer of elephants, is a good English pun too, not just because that's a Yorkshire greeting but due to it also being a play on howdah, the furniture placed on the back of an elephant to carry passengers.

I liked this one, all the way down to a neat moment when Asterix reminds the Indian executioner that his race had invented the number zero. Cacofonix does indeed save the day, but he also gets to take some magic potion and womp some bad guys. There simply isn't room for much of that but it does happen and I'm happy. It's not the best in the series, for sure, but it's worthy and it shows that Uderzo was more than able to turn out a relatively traditional 'Asterix' book on his own. I've enjoyed some of his diversions from tradition, but this one doesn't need any, not really. That's an important thing to know, given that he has three more to go before things mix up a little. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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