Previous Book: Story Maze (Series, Book 3):The Wooden Cow.

Next book: Story Maze (Series, Book 5):The Minotaur’s Maze.

The fourth in the "Storymaze" series follows the surfing adventures of Nico, Claudia, and Mikey through parallel worlds and across the universe. This time they continue their attempt to help Ulysses to win the Queen of Fresia with The Golden Udder. However, when they attempt to retrieve the Udder, they discover it has been stolen by Amycus (along with Nico’s surfboard) and lost in a bet to Limousin, a surfing champion. They begin a quest to retrieve it. Their time-travel device M.I.T. has been damaged and the story becomes a fractured “choose-your-own-adventure” as they are sent to different places at the same time and try different courses of action to retrieve the Udder. In several of these they alternative storylines they die; by time-traveling; plummeting off a flat planet; falling through a rope bridge, falling over a waterfall, or by being turned into sewerage-loving fish. In another timeline, they find Limousin and help him defeat the Harpies who plague his meals. He sends them to find Simmental – a Zebu to whom he lost the Udder in a card game. When they reach Simmental’s planet Zebu, they meet a young servant girl named Medea. She helps them to achieve their aim of finding The Golden Udder. Simmental promises the trio that they can have the Udder if they repair his broken travelator, which they do. The Zebu then reneges on his plan forcing them to steal it from a dragon, who they release from his dungeon prison. The dragon then saves them from the army in a show of gratitude and the three manage to return the Udder to Fresia where it belongs.

Graphic novel for children, with a science-fiction and comedy approach to classical myth and antiquity. 

The Golden Udder is a subversion and re-appropriation of the tale of the golden fleece similar in style to a fractured fairytale. It is not Jason who is searching for the fleece, however, but the human heroes of the story, who travel through time and space to track down the Udder/Fleece. The tale takes the episodic nature of the Odyssey (a carry-over from the previous book in the series – The Wooden Cow) and fractures it further presenting the reader with choices about what storylines to follow. Most of these storylines result in violent and tragic deaths that mimic those of classical mythology, but with a twist of the silliness, the series embraces. There are references to many classical mythological characters, from Harpies, the Sphinx, and Amycus, to Medea, who helps the heroes steal the Golden Udder and then falls in love with the Udder’s dragon protector. The book also has a self-referential commentator in the Narrator who parodies the Greek Chorus. The story takes the mythological elements and the original story and twists it, chops it up, and re-assembles it as a fast-paced action tale of absurdity for young readers who may recognise these references, but also may not. The choose-your-own-adventure style is a new element in this fourth book but serves to distinguish the book as something new and different from the previous ones in the series and allows for more allusions and absurdity.