Piers Anthony

Decades ago, I read a lot of Piers Anthony. Most of his books were fast-paced and didn’t take themselves too seriously, which I appreciated. I haven’t read his stuff in years, but when I received a review copy of his latest book Well-Tempered Clavicle, the thirty-fifth Xanth book, I decided to check it out. I figured it would be a fun trip to a fantasy world I hadn’t visited in a while.

Reader, that was a mistake. Let me summarize the first part of the book, to the tune of the Badgers song:

Panties, panties, panties, panties,
panties, panties, panties, panties,
panties, panties, panties, panties,
breast grope, breast grope.

Panties, panties, panties, panties,
panties, panties, panties, panties,
panties, panties, panties, panties,
breast grope, rape!

And that’s when I stopped reading.

For the sake of accuracy, I should point out that the scene in chapter five wasn’t an actual, completed rape, but a thwarted attempt:

Attilla looked, expecting another pun. What he saw made him pause appreciatively. “Hello, nymph. Are you looking for a faun?”

“I am no nymph,” she replied. “I am Joy’nt, the walking skeleton.”

The bleep you are! I know a nymph when I see one. So get a run on, because if I catch you I’ll make exactly like a celebrating faun.”

…

Attilla sheathed his sword and grabbed her by an arm. “Bleep no! Now I’ve got you and I will do what I bleeping well please with you.”

WHAT THE BLEEP HAPPENED TO THESE BOOKS?

The plot is about a walking skeleton (Picka Bones) and his friend Joy’nt, a dog named Woofer, a cat named Midrange, a bird named Tweeter, and a princess named Dawn who needs a prince. In order for Dawn to find her man, they’re sent to capture Pundora’s box, which released a flood of terrible puns into Xanth.

I’ll be honest, I was torn about posting this review. Partly because I don’t generally review books I don’t finish, and partly because I skipped ahead to the author’s note and learned that Anthony’s daughter died while he was writing this book. I can’t even imagine what he went through, and I feel terrible for him and his family. So I wouldn’t expect this to be his strongest book.

Yet if this is a substandard Xanth book, why didn’t an editor at Tor work with Anthony to fix it? Why did they send this thing to print as is? Tor puts out a lot of incredible books, so I’m baffled as to how or why they let this one into the world in its current form.

I suspect that the things I find problematic go deeper than this one book. Anthony notes that his next Xanth book will probably be Luck of the Draw, “wherein there is a Demon contest to determine the ideal man for Princess Harmony … Xanth has many princesses, as noted, and finding suitable men for them is a continuing project.”

Right.

The panties thing was beginning to show up even back when I stopped reading Anthony’s stuff, but now it seems like every human and humanoid female has to flash them at least once a chapter to fulfill the panty quota. And then there’s the “fun and lighthearted” attempted rape. (Because men are just like that and can’t help themselves…)

Yeah, I’m done. I think I’m going to go read Elizabeth Bear’s Range of Ghosts instead.

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