The Borribles Go For Broke

Borribles are runaway children whose ears become pointed as they take to the streets, indicators of their independence and intelligence. As long as their ears remain unclipped they will never age; for this reason, they wear woollen hats pulled low over their ears in order to remain undetected by the authorities, who find their freedom threatening to the social order. Borribles are skinny, scruffy, and tough; they have nothing to do with money, and steal what they need to survive.

Following on from the adventures of The Great Rumble Hunt, the second volume of The Borrible Trilogy begins with the surviving adventurers discovery that Sam the horse is still alive. In attempting to rescue him the Borribles are lured into danger both by the newly-established Special Borrible Group, a branch of the police determined to wipe out the Borribles and their way of life, and by one of their own – Spiff, whose motives behind the mission to Rumbledom are slowly revealed.

All this leads the Borribles deep in to Wendle territory beneath the streets of Wandsworth, and down in to a shifting tunnel of mud dug deep beneath the mudflats of the Wandle River.

The film rights for The Borrible Trilogy have been optioned many times but the project has always remained in development hell. A film is currently being developed by CUBA Pictures, the film development arm of literary agents Curtis Brown.[1]

Dave Langford reviewed The Borribles Go For Broke for White Dwarf #53, and stated that "Sussworth and his minion Sgt Hanks are brilliantly awful grotesques, like Dickens characters; with their ghastly dedication they'd burn any number of ideologically unsound books, especially this one. Meanwhile the main story is about bloody internecine strife between Borribles, and amounts to a mini-epic. Fine stuff."[2]

• Review by Jeff Frane (1982) in Locus, #254 March 1982

• de Larrabeiti, Michael. The Borrible Trilogy. (London: Tor, 2003). UK edition - ISBN 0330490850
• de Larrabeiti, Michael. The Borribles Go For Broke. (Tor, 2005). US Edition - ISBN 0765350068

• http://www.michaeldelarrabeiti.com/books/pdfs/borribles2.pdf Free PDF of the first chapter of The Borribles Go For Broke

• The Borribles - the first volume of The Borrible Trilogy
• The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis - the third volume of The Borrible Trilogy