Piers, you've gone too far

kw: book reviews, fiction, fantasy, xanth series, puns

In two prior posts I've reviewed three of the Xanth novels by Piers Anthony. I like them. If the author had shown a little more restraint, I'd have liked Air Apparent equally well. In its afterword he mentions being over seventy now. Perhaps that explains his lapse: to me, this book had a strong undercurrent, an attempt to justify overt pedophilia. To be charitable, perhaps failing inhibitions are leading to an authorial version of Tourette's Syndrome.

Xanth fans know that there is always a rather juvenile sexual tension, pitched at the level of ten-year-old boys, who think it the height of naughtiness to glimpse a girl's underwear. So what possessed him to close the first quest sequence with a grownup getting a solid double handful of a thirteen-year-old girl's bosom? Can having her magically aged by five years a few scenes later somehow make it all OK? I think not. And he manages to go downhill from there. The old dude's gone from a slightly risqué elderly uncle sort, to a dirty old man.

Sorry, Piers, you've lost a reader.

Xanth x2

kw: book reviews, fiction, fantasy, xanth series, puns

My son brought home a couple of Piers Anthony's books in the Xanth series recently. When he was done with them, I zipped through them: Geis of the Gargoyle and Zombie Lover.

To those not familiar with Mr. Anthony's Xanth books: each is a ride on a punnicular railway through a magical version of Florida, his home state. They are unlike anyone else's work, so I'll leave it to you to discover. I sometimes wonder why the author picked Xanth for his land's name. It means both "yellow" and "other"; probably the latter...and I guess he just likes the sound of it.

Each story is a multiple quest, typically in chiastic order. To be boringly dry, a chiasma is an anti-parallel structure, in which problems are posed in order—and typically each new main character introduced comes with one of the problems attached—then solved in reverse order. Those that are not chiastic tend to be parallel (solved in the order presented).

The quest by itself may be no great shakes; the narrative twists in the punny landscape will have you digging for the other meaning of something in almost every sentence.

A thread running through all the Xanth series is the Adult Conspiracy, which lets the author use all kinds of double entendres and allusions to sexual activity, thus avoiding explicit language, because of the grownup characters' requirement of keeping such things from children. The term "summoning the stork" is Anthony's cute euphemism for sex. The attitude is a slightly exaggerated version of 1950s-schoolyard taboos, where boys freak out if they see any girl's "undies".

Another thread is that new arrivals to Xanth from Mundania (Georgia, I guess) are not magical, but their offspring born in Xanth are. The implications for child rearing can get interesting.

Great narrative skills, on a very light level, so that hardly any mythical creature seems truly threatening. Great escape lit.

Highest pun-per-page rate going!

kw: book reviews, fantasy, humor, xanth series

I suppose you've heard of the court jester who was going to be hanged for punning on the king's name. He was offered clemency if he refrained from future puns. Upon his reply, "No noose is good news," he was promptly hanged.

For a graduate course in punmanship, read any of Piers Anthony's Xanth series novels. The current offering, Pet Peeve, is just a bit punnier, substantially racier, than the prior 20-odd Xanth books. In his postlude, Anthony relates that he can crank out a Xanth novel in about three months. With his very wide-ranging readership, all offering fresh meterial via his website, it's a surprise that it takes him that long...unless the first two months is weeding out the material.

Xanth is a Florida-shaped land full of elves, dwarves, goblins, ogres, were-creatures, and of course a smattering of humans. They all have a roughly third-grade sensibility when it comes to sexual matters. Males of any species "freak out" upon the sight of any female's panties. Of course, various females (human and near-human) go about bare-breasted or wholly bare at times, with little ill effect. It is all part of the Adult Conspiracy...and you'll just have to read about it because it just can't be described out of context.

In Pet Peeve, the Peeve is a Parody, a parrot-like bird that excels at the brutal art of mad-dog insult. The hero, the land's only gentle Goblin, is given the task of finding a home for the Peeve. On the way, an attempt to create a single nest-building construction robot goes awry when the robot's program—obtained from the Land of Robots on a mini-moon—is found to have no "stop" instruction. Robots are soon everywhere.

The plot plays distant second fiddle to the better-than-one-per-sentence pun rate that Anthony likes to maintain. This leaves one alternately tickled and irritated. But, then, that's what puns ought to do. They may be the "lowest form of humor," but they can hit you anywhere.