A Spell for Chameleon (Magic of Xanth)

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Not only does Bink manage to get the healing elixir, but he also manages to find out that the Storm King has died. All the officials of Xanth, including the Council of Elders (which includes Bink's father Roland), arrive on the scene. The Council captures Trent, heals Chameleon, and offers Trent the kingship if he will marry Iris. The Storm King was allowed to remain King well past his prime because there was no suitable successor and by forcing Trent to marry (and presumably produce magician-caliber offspring) the council hopes to prevent that state of affairs from occurring again. Trent's first act as King is to get rid of the magical barrier between Xanth and Mundania and grant Bink (and non-magical folk in general including mundanes) the right to stay in Xanth. Trent's forces, who consisted of mundanes who wished to immigrate to Xanth, begin to settle in various regions of the magical land. Bink and Chameleon are then married and Trent and Iris take up residence in Castle Roogna. Bink and Chameleon obtain a cottage just outside the Castle and Bink is given the title of Official Researcher of Xanth. Oh. “But he charges a year’s service for a single spell,” Bink protested. “I have only a month.” But that was not quite accurate; if the Magician identified a talent for Bink, then he would not be exiled, and he would have a year available. He was deeply touched by Sabrina’s faith in him. She did not say what others said: that he had no magic. She did him the immense courtesy of choosing to believe that his magic merely remained undiscovered.

Ultimately, this is a series that you either "get" or you don't. And if you don't, then nothing I (or anyone else!) can say here will make any difference. Only a phenomenal series of coincidences had saved his skin. He knew that coincidence was an untrustworthy ally. I'm not sure when I read this -- the 1995 date I've entered is just a guess. It was the first Piers Anthony novel I read. It was imaginative and somewhat fun, but I was put off by the casual sexism. I went on to read other Anthony works, and that never goes away. Whenever a female character walks on stage, Anthony dissects her physical attractiveness, in anatomical detail. He cannot apparently imagine a female character without discussing how sexually attractive she is. Everything's couched in such artless language, too, which just makes it worse. It's all "needs" "urges" "absolutely beautiful" "me tarzan, you jane." Even born mouth-breathers can write well (see: Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller), so what gives? 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.So she's perfect for the protag because due to ... women burning him? ... he's come to the idea that he can't trust women who are both beautiful and smart. A lot of people have put it this way: in this book, women can be beautiful, smart, or good. Choose two.

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. So, Piers Anthony is a pervert, a sexist pervert. That this particular book was written in 1977 is no excuse. and keeps up at afair pace throughout the book. Bink assesses the attractiveness of pretty much every female person (human or not) that he encounters in the book, and he is not aloneinthis. 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—” 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).Oh no, no, no..... this could not be it! WHY?! Why was this so bad? Oh, god. This review is GONNA BE TOUGH. This book was SO bad, I forgot I even read the thing! Bink avoids death and very sexy enticement but the result of his audience with Humfrey is equivocal. Humfrey can tell that Bink has atalent and apowerful one at that. What Humfrey cannot work out is the nature of the talent. Whatever the talent is, its nature makes Bink resistant to scryingspells. Bink gets to a town and a guy agrees to help him as long as he'll get some help in return. See, he needs to take care of some unpleasant business.

Lost in Xanth, the group must work together to find civilization and safety. They come upon an ancient castle built by one of Xanth's first kings. This magic castle, abandoned and unoccupied for centuries, is haunted now by zombies and harmless spirits. However, the castle has an astonishing, hard-to-identify power: It's almost as if it were aware of what's happening in and around it. It used this power to draw in Bink, Fanchon, and Trent. When it first sensed them, the castle knew there were two formidable magicians in the group—Bink and Trent—and that one of them might be able to take the throne and the kingship, restoring the castle to its previous magnificence. Once the group is in the presence of the castle, Bink understands that Fanchon, Wynne, and Dee are all one person: a woman named Chameleon.The title character of A Spell for Chameleon, Chameleon, is a woman whose magic (everyone in Xanth is magic) is that she waxes and wanes in intelligence and beauty over the course of a monthly cycle. Intelligence and beauty are out of phase, so that when she is highly intelligent she is ugly, and when she is beautiful she is so stupid as to be barely capable of coherent speech. Our hero Bink, when he figures this out, describes her as the Perfect Woman, combining in one person the best that a woman can be. Xanth is an enchanted land where magic rules, a land of centaurs and dragons and basilisks where every citizen has a unique spell to call their own. For Bink of North Village, however, Xanth is no fairy tale. He alone has no magic. And unless he gets some—and fast!—he will be exiled. Forever.