A Spell for Chameleon (Magic of Xanth)

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As if she didn’t know. But as his mind formed the necessary words, his mouth balked. He knew what her answer had to be. No one could remain in Xanth after his twenty-fifth birthday unless he demonstrated a magic talent. Bink’s own critical birthday was barely a month away. He was no child now. How could she marry a man who was so soon to be exiled? He had not been punished. His mother, Bianca, believed he had learned his lesson—and he had, he had! Next time he played with a cleaver on the sly he would watch where his fingers were. His father seemed privately pleased that Bink had shown so much courage and tenacity in adversity, even in his wrongdoing, “The lad’s got nerve,” Roland had said. “Now if only he had magic—”

Omigod, a truer word was never spoken. Given the current right-wing discussion of Critical Race Theory it seems particularly appropriate to take Anthony’s comment to heart and to remember that history, a living thing, is always written from the unique perspective of the people that are actually doing the writing. But I digress. Then I presume she would have fled him at the outset, had she disliked him--and that he would not have forced her if she trusted him.'" The ridiculousness of the book is its own reward. It’s (almost) impossible to take it seriously. This is particularly true for the first half of the story, but the tone changes somewhat in the second half. The latter sequences deal with themes like the nature of the magic of Xanth, its relation to the “real” (mundane) world and the Xanth gene pool. Also: redemption, haunted castles and zombie crocodiles.Anyhow, I also enjoyed the one part in the beginning about the chameleon. Or wait- was is a lizard? I don't remember. I liked that little paragraph about the little reptile. That had absolutely (well almost) nothing to do with the story. Michael Johnston, Melissa de la Cruz's husband, collaborated with her on the "Blue Bloods" and "Witches of East End" series. Frozen will be the first of their books for which he is named as an author. Through his story, I had an inkling that maybe I didn't need to be so "special" to grow up to be a decent human being. Like Bink, I could grow up to be perfectly ordinary and unheralded — just a normal guy, really — and still get the cool girl. It made me think that maybe we'll all turn out fine, even without our participation trophies. And, A SPELL FOR CHAMELEON might have been a charming, endearing, and quite exciting young adult fantasy, to be sure, except for that “but” that rational modern readers would face. The only question is whether that “but” becomes sufficiently distracting to overwhelm the story and to detract from other positive aspects of the novel such as Bink's fascinating ruminations on the nature of magic. Piers Anthony must have been a misogynist for the ages because his character Bink is sexist to an extreme that verges on ridiculous. He has a sophomoric juvenile fascination with sex and, in particular, is absolutely besotted with female breasts, female posteriors, female legs, and the attributes of a curvaceous female body in general. Even in situations of imminent, life-threatening danger, Anthony allows his hero’s thoughts to turn to matters of sex and feminine beauty. It went beyond silly and, for me, became distracting and aggravating. As always, of course, YMMV but I’ll have to leave that for you to judge. I first read this book when I was in college, I think. I had read several other series by Piers Anthony which all started out well enough but somehow got needlessly bogged down in mathematical games or sophomore philosophy, none of which did anything for the later stories. Also the actions and motives of the characters in his sequels seemed to get more complex, while the characters themselves remained undeveloped. So I will admit starting this book with some hesitation.

What did readers like, apparently? Endless lame puns, for one. There’s no obvious wordplay that is beneath Anthony: cherries explode because ​ “cherry bombs” and so on. Melissa de la Cruz grew up in Manila and now lives in California. She is the author of numerous young adult novels, including the books in the "Blue Bloods" series. A Spell for Chameleon is a fantasy novel by British-American writer Piers Anthony, published in 1977 by Ballantine Books/ Del Rey Books. It is the first book of the Xanth series.To top it off, soon after he realizes that Chameleon is the only woman who can really satisfy his need for variety and that he loves her, the two have sex....but it's while she's in her beautiful but stupid phase. That bothered me, because when she's in her stupid phase, she is really, really stupid, to the point that I question whether she can really consent while stupid. I mean, the girl gets really stupid. Does she really understand how she feels about him or how her other versions will feel about that later? At an earlier point in the book, her stupid phase is shown to be dangerously trusting and willing to give up sex indiscriminately, so I'm really genuinely not sure. I don't know, it was just a little unsettling.

Then there’s the curious case of the village rape trial that Bink stumbles across for no real imaginable reason, other than to give the reader a chance to read the word “rape” multiple times in a lighthearted setting. There’s Trent, the dashing magician-in-exile who will intrepidly lead his army into Xanth to save the land from under population (says one of Trent’s soldiers, “He’ll encourage the local gals to marry us, so we can have families.”). And there’s Crombie, one of Bink’s comrades, who just comes right and announces things like, “Women are the curse of mankind.” When challenged—okay, not even really challenged, just curiously questioned—about these utterances by Bink, it comes to light that Crombie “rejected all women because he felt they rejected him.” Bink’s final analysis of his buddy’s reason for loathing all women? “Well, it was a good enough rationale.” Despite the lightheartedness of the story there is a perilous undertone. Xanth is a magical place, but it can be pretty dangerous too, since it is extremely unpredictable. It’s a place where walking off into the woods at night is almost sure to get you killed, and the method of demise can be as inane as “death by peacefulness” (which essentially boils down to losing all interest in living). Xanth. Where nothing is quite as it seems, and even inanimate objects can cast spells; where even puns aren’t so much puns, as something else… This is a stand-in for the entire Xanth sequence, since it is currently running at 30-odd books and counting. And I love all of them. Chameleon’s curse is typical of how women are treated in the book. Agency makes women annoying or dangerous. The main reason for tolerating them is the chance to have sex with them (although that too can bring complications; Wynne, for example, doesn’t know enough to say no — but she also does not know enough to avoid dragging paramours into life and death situations) but most of them demand asteep price for their services. Or worse, accuse someone of rape on the specious grounds they did not want to be overpowered and forced tohavesex.

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The story is not a bad one and certainly better than most of the later stories in the rather long Xanth series which after a few volumes degenerate into mere excuses to drag out as many lame puns as Mister Anthony and his fans (yes, he does requests, I guess) can dream up. Unfortunately, Like so many characters by Piers Anthony the ones in this book are flat and, by and large, uninteresting. They are there to move the plot, but by themselves each is a flat stereotype. Well, I think this was aimed at young adults, so maybe that’s good enough. Certainly the series has been wildly successful to the point that it seems to be all Mister Anthony writes these days. That is sort of a shame because he has shown his ability to tell a decent story. She’s a sorceress, a good one. She has powers you have not yet glimpsed. She requires a man she can respect—one who has stronger magic than she does.” —The Good Magician Humfrey on Iris. Plots driven by draconian laws are of course hardly unique to Anthony. The Silver Age Legion of Superheroes revelled in them; the main difference between hero Element Lad and villain Cosmic King is that their common superpower was accepted on Element Lad’s home world and considered evil by default on Cosmic King’s. Iam so proud Iwasted brain cells remembering that. That said, it would be interesting to list all the parallels between The Point! and ASpell for Chameleon if Iwas not worried doing so might make me think less of The Point! Bad enough The Point!’s draconian laws aimed at avirtually non-existent population suggests past ethniccleansing. There's a point where she jumps over a crevasse and he grabs her boobs. He apologizes, sure, but then laughs about it later when a guy asks him "where he held on." Oh, and he questions later whether he did it on purpose or not. a small lizard perched on a brown stone. Feeling threatened by the approach of human beings along the path, it metamorphosed into a stingray beetle, then into a stench-puffer, then into a fiery salamander.

Lee Ewing has read a fair number of Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels and he does it creditably. I did occasionally have the impression he was rushing through the reading, but that could be a matter of the publisher trying to save tape space (yes, I believe this edition was originally published on tape) by speeding up the recording and then doing a bit of digital magic to keep Mister Ewing from sounding like the fourth member of Alvin and the Chipmunks (the one who left the group before they made it big), however, I have suffered through much worse examples of that. Would I recommend this book? It's hard to say. Usually I like a book, or I don't, with clearly defined reasons. Although I did like many aspects of the book, and generally it was an amusing read, the misogyny and objectification of women in A Spell for Chameleon was jarring and definitely soured my enjoyment of the book. Usually I don't believe that there is much harm in letting kids/teenagers read books with non-graphic romance/some sexuality, especially considering what they are exposed to in today's media, but I would NOT recommend introducing your children to A Spell for Chameleon because the messages underlying the sexuality featured in this book are inappropriate to be teaching today's youth. If you, as an adult reader, can tolerate the sexist attitude that is present in this book without getting too pissed off, there is something to this book that made it a fantasy genre classic in the first place. But really, when it comes down to it, there are SO many good fantasy books out there that are not plagued by rampant misogyny, so why bother reading one that is? I know that I won't be reading any further books in the Xanth series. urn:lcp:spellforchameleo0000anth:epub:30e4503f-5442-4f0f-9241-6ffaf0cba9f8 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier spellforchameleo0000anth Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t9r313w2c Invoice 1652 Isbn 185723250X The book starts with the main character, Bink, in his home village. He must discover his magical talent before he comes of age, or be exiled to Mundania. While on his way to see the Good Magician Humfrey about whether he has a magic talent, Bink runs into three different women, Wynne, Dee, and Iris, as well as Chester and Cherie Centaur, and Crombie the soldier. He finds out from Good Magician Humfrey that he has Magician-caliber magic but that it can't be identified. You can probably tell from this that a) the book is aimed at young men, and b) women might find the question, never mind the answer, to be offensive.Oh, but then his father tells Bink that it's not what he wanted anyway, because he doesn't want a mindless sex toy. That's not enough of a challenge. But then goes on to dehumanize women in telling Bink how he'd be bored with a beautiful woman with no mind.