Piers Anthony's land of Xanth sounds like the best place ever if you're an adventure-seeker. Weird shit happens around every bend, and you get to pack light because things like tents and shoes and pies grow on trees. And what else could you possibly need?
I can get tired of all the puns pretty easily, though. I read The Source of Magic and Demons Don't Dream, which I think were written fairly far apart in time. In the former, the puns came and went in droves all at once, with strange, staggered pacing that would throw me off. In the latter, it seemed that there was a better rhythm, a more consistent atmosphere. The sheer wittiness is maddening in all of these books, though. But fun. Very fun.
It's the flippant overall style that makes the serious moments all the more poignant, and even touching. Sometimes it can be difficult to think of the characters as real people with real feelings (I mean, maybe that's because they're, well, not real... but that aside), so when it does hit you, it hits harder.
Okay, so I'm a longtime Eddings fan. The Belgariad and Mallorean series are two of my favorites ever. They're full of political intrigue, deep and complex characters, high adventure, and a bit of mystery and suspense. Reading Pawn of Prophecy after finishing the series is weird, because the beginning is obviously more poetic than everything after it, and sometimes I wish the whole series was that way. Because then the descriptions become a bit bland. Every character seems to have the same dry sense of humor (the author's sense of humor, I assume). I like dry humor, but for such a supposedly diverse group of characters it seemed unnatural for everyone to have the same anything.
I overlook these flaws because everything else is pretty awesome.
So I decided to try a newer series, written in this century (whoa!) by David & Leigh Eddings. It's called the Dreamers. It's not very good.
I mean, some things about it are 'good,' I guess. The authors really have talent for easing readers into a complex situation so that it still seems simple. But I can't get past how much I didn't care about anything. It was boring. The characters were so communicative as to repeat their situation about a dozen times to each other, and I got sick of hearing about things after the third time. Many plot points and character traits were simply stated, not shown. Also, everyone, again, had that same exact dry sense of humor I recognize so well.
I'm not reading the rest of the series.
I have moved on to greener shadows, and am now trying Zelazny. I read the first bit of one of the Amber books just this morning and can't currently remember any of it except I think the main character's name is Merlin and he has a magic choke-cord for a pet. So I'm coming to the conclusion that reading these from book 1 to book 10 may be a good idea.
