The War with Lilliputians (Russian: Война с лилипутами) is a 1992 novel by Kir Bulychev from his Alice, Girl from the Future cycle.
Alice's family is increasingly worried about her dangerous exploits, so they decide she shouldn't go on any space travels for the rest of the summer which has already been very eventful for her (encompassing the events of Gai-do, The End of Atlantis, and The Subterrine Boat). After a long argument, Alice says she'll go to the country house of her friend Arkasha; she just doesn't mention that Arkasha is planning experiments involving a Shrink Ray machine.
Sure enough, after Arkasha shrinks himself to the size of an insect, he is suddenly captured by equally tiny malevolent aliens, forcing Alice and Pashka to race to his rescue. While they manage to pull it off and Alice's grandmother literally throws the bandits' ship away, It Has Only Just Begun as the characters start to uncover a sinister plot of an entire criminal clan with the help of a slave girl they have freed from the bandits.
The novel contains examples of:
- Abnormal Allergy: Alice's parents plan to send her to her aunt who grows prize-winning artichokes. Alice immediately claims she has had an incurable allergy to artichokes since birth.
- Beautiful Slave Girl: Zauri is incredibly beautiful. Thankfully, she is freed from the Panchengas when she is about fourteen, before it can become a problem (and she confirms that, for the older slaves, it can).
- Big Damn Heroes: Granny Lucretia and Puccini-2, dressed as musketeers and wielding smallswords, arrive at the last moment to rescue Alice from the desert rabbits.
- Brawn Hilda: Panchenga Skuliti’s companion only known as Comrade-in-Arms is a very large, strong woman who is an excellent fighter.
- Chekhov's Gun: In the very beginning of the book, Granny Lucretia, who has been planning another fight with Puccini-2, is angry that he has gone somewhere into the outer space and keeps delaying his return. Later, it turns out he went to meet his future student Zauri who ultimately never turned up because her ship was captured by Panchenga Skuliti.
- The Family That Slays Together: The Panchenga clan. The father blackmails prominent scientists to help him with his plans, one of the sons is a pirate captain and another owns an Orphanage of Fear where he keeps the children enslaved and frightened into silence.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: For some reason, instead of using his usual Shapeshifter Default Form of a nondescript, short and pale man, Rat turns into a young man with wavy golden hair to talk to the Pirate Planet's guests.
- Friendly Enemy: This book marks the first time Rat and Jolly U are an example of this trope towards Alice. They are genuinely happy to see her and berate the Panchengas for taking her prisoner, and Alice muses they can't really be that bad, offers Rat medical help when he is wounded, and decides not to bring them to justice.
- Given Name Reveal: Zauri's name turns out to be a pseudonym given to her by the Panchengas and their cronies. Her real name is revealed to be Lara Coralli.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: Rat and Jolly U give a drum concert for Alice and her friends. Though they produce nothing but cacophony, Alice genuinely enjoys the concert, figuring out that if people have innocent hobbies such as playing the drums, they are not so irredeemable.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Alice is quite uncomfortable when Zauri admits she likes Pashka.
- Hope Spot: There is one in Zauri’s backstory. She is freed from the abuse at Panchenga Muliti’s plantation and goes to study to be a circus performer… but on her way to the school, her ship is attacked by pirates and she is enslaved again, for extra irony, by the other Panchenga brother.
- I Have Your Wife: The Panchengas blackmail the scientists by threatening their relatives' lives.
- Love at First Sight: Vaga falls in love with Zauri the moment he sees her. His feelings are so strong he immediately joins the quest to look for her real parents.
- My Beloved Smother: Alice's parents and Granny Lucretia decide enough is enough and Alice should be more careful with her adventures. Alice's solution is to tell them a Half-Truth about her plans.
- Never Accepted in His Hometown: In the beginning, Alice thinks that people are passing by her house in Moscow without knowing or caring that she lives there, and compares her situation to that of Christopher Columbus.
- Never Trust a Title: Panchenga Skuliti and his crew don't belong to an actual microscopic civilization. They are regular Human Aliens who are made tiny via Puccini-2's Shrink Ray, and they are returned to normal halfway through the book.
- Not Used to Freedom: For quite a while, Zauri is unable to comprehend she isn't anyone's slave anymore.
- Only a Flesh Wound: Downplayed. Rat gets a large third- to fourth-degree burn after getting wounded by a blaster and is in such pain that he reverts to his real scorpionish shape; however, he refuses when Alice offers to treat the burn, and, indeed, he walks and talks almost normally and soon is even able to shapeshift again.
- Prank Punishment: When Alice and Pashka try to fend off Granny Lucretia by telling her that they have to care after "skunusiks" (a fictional breed of animals), Lucretia pretends to believe them and creates holographic images of fantastic monsters to convince them that their lie came to life.
- Princess Phase: Zauri begins to have one soon after getting freed, dreaming of becoming a princess with pretty jewels and dresses and being certain her parents are king and queen. Justified, since the poor girl hasn't had much of a real childhood.
- Really Royalty Reveal: Zauri thinks her parents must be royals or at least royals in disguise. They're scientists.
- Rescue Romance: Downplayed. Zauri is briefly attracted to Pashka after he takes part in her rescue from Panchenga Skuliti, but it doesn't last for long.
- Shout-Out: The name of Zauri, the slave girl Alice and Pashka free, is a reference to Isaura the Slave (the 1976 version of the telenovela was quite well-known in the Soviet Union and Russia).
- Smart People Play Chess: According to Foka Grant, humans became sapient at all only when they invented chess.
- Story-Breaker Power: Puccini-2 is a magician who can invoke a Shrink Ray (including across a distance of billions of miles) and is able to paralyze and then unfreeze several people at a time with a single phrase. Such abilities could have allowed him to solve most of the problems in the other books, so he only appears in this novel and is absent for multiple chapters.
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: This lighthearted book with occasional Breaking the Fourth Wall also happens to include the Panchenga bandit clan, who are among the most despicable villains in the Alice universe.
- Villain with Good Publicity: For a long time, Panchenga Muliti manages to hide the real goings-on at his "orphanage" so well that he is famous and respected for his work.
- Villainous Rescue: Alice, Vaga and Puccini-2 are saved from the Panchenga clan by none other than Alice's old enemies Rat and Jolly U.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Granny Lucretia and Puccini-2 are fighting almost constantly but really are the best of friends.
