Piers Anthony & Xanth

SPOILER ALERT

I'm halfway through the Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony.  He is a bit of a dirty writer, kind of the old "heaving bosom" kind of writer.  His other major series, Xanth, is known for its use of puns.  Anthony's early Xanth books are quite spectacular.  Both series follow a main family, and each story deals (sometimes indirectly) with that family.  In Xanth it is Bink and his family, while the Incarnations series deals with the Luna/Orb Kaftan family. 

What I like is that Anthony's ideas about magic is always slightly skewed from the Tolkien-Middle Earth type fantasy.  The first Xanth novel, A Spell for Chameleon, starts with Bink - who is trying to find out what type of magic he has.  Everyone in Xanth has to have magic even if it is only the "spot on the wall" variety...ie they can make a spot appear on a wall.  It is magic even if it is as low as you can get and still be called magic.  We later learn that Bink actually has such powerful magic that it is more powerful than even Xanth itself.  People who do have an immense gift of magic are called Magicians.  It's the ruling class, and right now Xanth is stagnant.  It's King-Magician is almost dead, there is a magical barrier around Xanth that keeps it safe from invasion, but also from an influx of new blood at all.

Bink is soon to be kicked out of Xanth if he can't show that he has magic by his twenty-fifth birthday.  So Bink goes on a quest to find out what it is.  You see Bink's magical ability is in the vein of protection.  A spot on the wall version of his magic would be to be protected from drowning, or rocks couldn't hurt him.  Higher levels of magic could be something like being safe from magical plants & animals.  Dragons, griffins, tangler trees - would not be able to harm him.  A sorcerer/ess is a step below a Magician, and that version of his magic might be protection from magical plants & animals, and from inanimate things as well - like falling rocks drowning etc.  Bink's gift however, is to protect him from everything that could harm him - and that includes him being unhappy, bored etc.  Part of this gift is that Bink can't know about it - because if he knew about it, then he might counter it, or rely on it and that wouldn't lead to his happiness.  After all unhappiness would hurt Bink. 

So Bink's gift protects knowledge of itself from the Good Magician Humphrey (who charges a years service for an answer to his question), gets him thrown out of Xanth, pulled into a conspiracy revolution, attacked by a Sea-Monster, in league with the Evil Magician Trent, protects him from the Gap Dragon, a deadly Tangler and introduces him to three intriguing yet opposite women.  There is the beautiful but stupid Wynne, the average looking and average intelligent Dee and the exceedingly ugly yet genius Fanchon.  Along the way he also learns about Centaur-Human relations, gaining a life-long friend Chester, as well as a soldier called Crombie. 

In the end we have a new King, the no-longer Evil Magician Trent & his wife the Sorceress (of Illusion) Iris.  Bink has fallen in love with Wynne-Dee-Fanchon, each is a different aspect of the same girl - Chameleon - who changes in beauty and intelligence throughout a month cycle as she swings between those opposites.  King Trent has allowed in a new "peaceful" wave of settlers, and also has learned about Bink's gift and protects it and Bink himself.  So the gift has given Bink everything he needs in life - an ever-changing wife, a stable political structure to live in, a job (with the new king), and friends. 

In the next book "The Source of Magic," Bink's gift relieves him of the boredom of the last months of childbirth, and in the end gets a gift from the source of Xanth's magic that all of his descendants will have magician-class magic as well.  His son can speak to any inanimate object, rock, water, key etc.  His granddaughter's magic is even more impressive - almost on par with Bink's.  She amplifies others magic, and when she decides something about someone - then they are that way.  "Dragon on a Pedestal" is the seventh Xanth book and is all about Ivy, the granddaughter, when she only 6 years old.  She gets lost in the wilderness with her "boyfriend," Hugo, who's magic gift is to produce fruit - usually squishy, starting to rot fruit. Under her influence Hugo can suddenly produce perfect fruit.  The Gap Dragon accidentally gets doused with some water from the Fountain of Youth, and is a toddler dragon - and under Ivy's influence is now a fine protector and friend of her and Hugo.

I'm of course leaving out a lot and I haven't even started on the puns...like a shoe-tree (whose fruit are shoes), bread-tree (bread loaves hang on it), the vanilla or chocolate moose that has to run fast so you don't eat it, a drink called boot-rear that gives you a kick in the posterior a bit after you take a drink, and other such puns.  In the first books Piers Anthony uses his puns minimally and the longer the series goes on the higher the amount of puns there is in each novel.  Pretty soon it was like Anthony was trying to see how many puns he could stuff into his book.  I stopped reading after about the 15 book or so. 

Next time I'll talk about the series that I am reading right now - the Incarnations of Immortality series.

Terry Pratchett & Discworld

Imagine a world shaped like a pizza, thousands of miles across and at it's center lies the Hub (an Olympia-like mountain where the large gods of Discworld live).  The seas continually fall off the edge into space, and that's not even the strange part.  Discworld is resting on the backs of 4 elephants that stand on the back of the Great A'Tuin - a giant star turtle that swims through space.

The first couple of books are okay to read, but that was not where I started reading the series.  All good writers progress in the work as they grow older - their writing evolves and the world around them shapes them as much as they shape their writing.  I once took a 2-day writing seminar from Orson Scott Card and he rightly says that when a writer usually starts out they us cliches as part of their story.  That it's like a big bunch at first - maybe 80-90% or something.  But when you get really good at it, then the percentage goes the opposite way and its only 10-20% cliche and the rest is original.

I first read The Thief of Time, 26th in the Discworld series and published 18 years after his first novel, The Colour of Magic.  So I read a pretty polished novel as my introduction to Discworld - and I loved it.  One of the main characters Lu Tze, uses Rule #1 to get around in life.  Be very aware of helpless looking old, small, bald men who are smiling.  Pratchett puts quite a spin on popular culture (ie - in a kung fu movie the ninja/kung-fu/karate master always looks like you could blow him over with a feather), and it's always his own spin.  We'd probably say "Fake It, 'Til You Make It!!" 

Rule #1 is called different things by different characters in the series.  Mistress Wetherwax refers to it as headology - it being a main ingredient to being a witch.  Wear a pointy hat, wear black, have skulls, spiderwebs, warts, and set your cottage back a big in the woods.  Another main character, Tiffany Aching, calls it Boffo - after learning about it from on of her witch teachers - a Miss Treason who was 111 when she died.  Boffo is...The Boffo Novelty & Joke Shop, No. 4 Tenth Egg Street, Ankh-Morpork - where you can buy everything that any self-respecting witch needs, but just hasn't the time to do, like really great dribbly candles.  A good dribbly candle takes ages to do correctly.  Or huge cauldrons that bubble green, and comes with extra satchels of the bubbly stuff if you get the deluxe package.  All reasonable priced.

Some other cliches-spins that Discworld has are...C.M.O.T. (Cut Me Own Throat) Dibbler, who at this low price (for a mystery meat sausage) is already cutting his own throat.  Cohen the Barbarian (who's 70 yet quite spry still) and his Silver Horde.  His daughter Coninna also stars in a novel.  Vampyres who belong to the Ubervald (think Transylvania) Temperance Movement - the black ribbon signifying a pledge to give up human blood (they prefer the b-word).  One such vampyre is a photographer in the local newspaper and turns to dust every time he uses too much flash.  It happens so often that he soon starts to carry a small glass vial of blood - which breaks when the dust falls and the blood restores him back into man-shape. 

Trolls are made out of rock, with diamond teeth, and love to eat different stones and who's drugs have names like Slab.  Lance-Constable Carrot (of the City Watch) is likely the Heir to the Ankh-Morpork throne, but was raised in Ubervald and thought (until he was 17) that he was just a really tall dwarf.  The City Watch are an affirmative action organization though, and soon have dwarfs, a werewolf, an Igor, a zombie or two, and trolls working for them.

Death is a skeleton in a black robe with cowl that carries a scythe, has radiating blue light as eyes and ALWAYS TALKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS.  Death tries to understand humans though, and so adopts an orphan as daughter, and then takes on an apprentice - who fall in love/save a queen/get married in one novel and then you learn they die in another.  But they've had a girl, Susan Sto Helit (Sto Helit being the duchy that the queen gave to her father for saving the queen and crown), and Miss Susan as she likes to be called inherited from her grandfather (but not genetically or by blood inherited) the abilities of Death - like walking through walls, stopping time, and TALKING like her granddad when she wants. 

Death is also the Death for everything except for vermin who have their own Death of Rats and who always SQUEAKS IN CAPS, although you can't ever understand him, and he has to get a talking crow to translate for him sometimes.  Death's white horse (not grey) is named Binky, and he gets to ride out with the other 3 of the Four Horsemen (and sometimes a Fifth Horseman KAOS, who goes by Ronnie Soak and is a terrific milkman most of the time.)

Music turns out to have been the sound that starts the Big Bang at the creation of the universe and eventually takes over a young druid harpist and he creates Music With Rocks In and demons from the Dungeon Dimension try to break through into ours.  Holy Wood is where moving pictures rip a hole in the fabric of space-time and they try again to enter. 

There is much, much more of course, in fact there are 39 books so far.  Pratchett himself was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2007, but wants to continue writing until he (my words) forgets what a novel is.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time & Understanding Women

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, in the beginning, is centered around 3 main characters, Rand, Perrin & Mat.  In almost every single book one or all of the three will not understand a member of the female half and will mutter something along the lines of..."I bet Perrin/Mat/Rand would understand what she's talking about, or maybe Mat/Rand/Perrin would."  I find it hilarious, and I really enjoy most of the things Jordan's characters say or think about members of the opposite sex. 

The main reason that I enjoy the by-play in the books is because I myself do not understand women (after all I'm not married & have no girlfriend right now), and most I've read in these books is something that I think, or have thought before.  And, this by-play is in fact two-sided from both men & women's point of view.  Here are some examples...

From the Fires of Heaven, 5th book, pg 650.  Rand is thinking about the different girls that he likes. 

"It was easy enough for her to talk of Elayne, but he could not even puzzle out Aviendha, but she seemed more relaxed than he had ever seen her.  Somehow or other, that seemed the opposite of how it should be.  It all seemed topsy-turvy with her.  But then, Min was the only woman who had not made him feel as if he were standing on his head half the time...One day he was going to understand women.  When he had the time to apply to it.  He suspected a lifetime would not be enough, though."

From Lord of Chaos, 6th book, pg 451.  Here a race called ogier (troll/ogre size, but kind, long-lived, and slow of action type of people) & Rand are talking about finding Rand's friend Loial who is the son of Corvil and soon to be husband of Erith.  Haman is the mayor of the ogier village that Loial comes from, and they have just arrived where Rand is, walking half-way across the country searching for Loial.

"This would be a fine discussion another time," Corvil said, directing her words to Rand yet plainly meaning them for Haman, as her sidelong looks indicated, "but I want to make as far west as I can before nightfall."  Haman sighed heavily.  "Surely you'll stay here awhile," Rand protested.  "You must be exhausted, walking all the way from Cairhien."  "Women do not become exhausted," Haman said, "they only exhaust others.  That is a very old saying among us."  Corvil and Erith sniffed in harmony.

From a Crown of Swords, 7th book, pg 119.  Gaul is an Aiel - sort of an Indian/Arab cross that come from the deserts, and who call those who live in greener lands across the mountains, wetlanders.  "Women," Gaul muttered, "are stranger than drunken wetlanders."

From a Crown of Swords, pgs 160-164.  Perrin finally gets to be alone with his wife, Faile, after coming back to the city thinking she might have been killed, tortured or worse when Coalvaere tried to make herself queen by colluding with Rand's abductors and usurping the throne in his absence.  Berelain is a leader of another country who is trying to steal Perrin's affections.

Colavaere delighted in it.  I could believe that she only took that Mayener strumpet [Berelain] as an attendant to throw the two of us together.  "Faile, Berelain, come lace my gown' 'Faile, Berelain, come hold the mirror for the hairdresser.' 'Faile, Berelain, come wash my back.'  So she could amuse herself waiting for us to claw one another's eyes out!  That is what I have put up with!  For you, you hairy-eared-----!"
His back thumped against the wall.  And something snapped inside him.  He had been frightened spitless for her, terrified, ready to face down Rand or the Dark One himself.  And he had done nothing, had never encouraged Berelain, had done everything in his wits to chase the woman away.  For which his thanks was this.
Gently he took her by the shoulders and lifted he until thos big tilted eyes were level with his.  "You listen to me," he said calmly.  He tried to make his voice calm, at least; it came out more of a growl in his throat.  "How dare you speak to me like that?  How dare you?  I worried myself near to death for fear you'd been hurt.  I love you, and nobody else but you.  I want no other woman but you.  Do you hear me?  Do you?" 
Crushing her to his chest, he held her, wanting to never let her go...Abruptly he realized what he was doing.  She was making sounds against his chest, but no words he could recognize.  He wondered that he did not hear her ribs creaking.  Berating himself for an oaf he let her go, arms springing apart, but before he could apologize, her fingers clutched his beard.
"So you love me?" she said softly.  Very softly.  Very warmly.  She was smiling too.  "A woman likes to hear that said the right way."  She had dropped the fan, and her free hand drew fingernails down his cheek, not far from hard enough to draw blood, but her throaty laugh held heat, and the smoldering in her eyes was as far from anger as possible.  "A good thing you didn't say you never looked at another woman, or I would think you had gone blind."
He was too stunned for words, too stunned evenn to gape.  Rand understood women, Mat understood women, but Perrin knew he never would....My husband," Faile breathed, "you have the courage of three men.  And the sense of a child on leading strings.  Why is it that as a man's courage goes up, his sense goes down?"

From a Crown of Swords, pg 178.  Here Rand is talking with Davram & Deira (Faile's parents), and Dorindha, Melanie & Bael, who are Aiel.  In Aiel society only women can ask men for marriage, and if two women are best friends, or near-sisters, then if the man wants to marry one, he has to marry both.  Dorindha & Melanie are near-sisters and both wife to Bael.

"After you marry," Davram murmured with a smile, "you will learn you must choose very carefully what to keep from your wife."  Deira glanced down at him, pursing her lips.  "Wives are a great comfort," Bael laughed, "if a man does not tell them too much."  Smiling Dorindha ran her fingers into his hair--and gripped for a moment as though she meant to tug his head off.  Bael grunted, but not for Dorindha's fingers alone.  Melanie wiped her small belt knife on her heavy skirt and sheathed it.  The two women grinned at one another over his head while he rubbed at his shoulder, where a small spot of blood stained his [clothing].  Deira nodded thoughtfully;  it seemed she had just gotten an idea.