Piers Anthony

What can I say? This was an absolutely appallingly bad book. I'm new to fantasy, and was really excited for this series. By five pages in, I was regretting that decision. By page thirty, I was openly laughing.

There's an interesting idea at play here (more interesting in 1983, I daresay, than in our world where "guy becomes Death" has been done to, well, death). But unfortunately, I'd assumed this was adult fantasy, whereas this is written like a youth book - in fact the prose reminds me specifically of the lesser "Choose Your Own Adventure" works. Zane, the central character, has the thought processes of a 13-year-old boy, and as a result, we're punished by having to endure every single mundane thought he has. (Without a trace of irony, one line of narrative voice says "This was unreal!")

It's clear that Piers Anthony has a lot of good ideas but has no way of expressing them. At one point, he describes a watch: "It was mechanical, but had a way of magic about it". Describe how Zane could sense this magic, Mr. Anthony. Or show us some glimmer or spectral presence, rather than just tell us that. This is fifth-grade writing at best. The world Zane inhabits, similarly, is not in the least appealing. Winged horses in this world? Are known as "air-horses". It's like a bad "Futurama" parody. (Note to Mr. Anthony: we didn't call aeroplanes "air-cars", nor did we call cars "metal-horses". This is not how the world works.)

Perhaps if I'd got further into the book, this would have been revealed as an elaborate literary device to show us Zane's simplistic surfer dude brain patterns, but somehow I doubt it. I'd only recommend this to fifth-graders, but even then, I'm sure they can find something better to read.… (mais)

Piers Anthony is not easy to read these days. A Spell for Chameleon (1977), the first of more than 40 Xanth novels, is a case in point. A husband-and-wife team who reviewed the book for NPR in 2013 noted that they first read the book when they were 13 and found its “naughty, offhand humor . . . risky and thrilling,” a shared experience that had helped them through their adolescence and made their first date memorable (https://www.npr.org/2013/10/06/203284105/spell-bound-by-a-goofy-book-and-later-united-by-it). On the other hand, many recent Goodreads reviewers find it irredeemably sexist. Both views may be valid.
Anthony knew his genre. A Spell for Chameleon is a magical kingdom quest in which a young man (Bink) and a young woman (Chameleon) fight monsters and struggle to come to grips with adulthood. Along the way, they encounter gangs of magical creatures. The novel is clearly aimed at an audience in their early to mid-teens, but it also takes advantage of the permissive sexual ethics of the times. Some might find its liberties objectionable, but it seems tame compared to some of its competition. Robert Heinlein had already written Time Enough for Love, and Samuel R. Delany had published Trouble on Triton: A Heterodox Utopia the year before. Though one can object to what a filmmaker might call the book’s male gaze, the women in Spell are diverse and play more than supportive roles. Chameleon is a victim of an occult version of hormonal determinism, but she and Bink are well-matched.
Anthony is a competent storyteller, as unabashed a punster as Robert Asprin, and the builder of a world with impressive multigenerational legs. If it didn’t look so much like Florida, one might want to compare Xanth to Discworld or the Fire Swamp and other locales of The Princess Bride.… (mais)