From the Bookshelf of The Deadwood Nerd Herd…

A Spell for Chameleon (Xanth, #1)

Piers Anthony

Start date: September 6, 2014

Finish date: October 5, 2014

Why we're reading this: Light, fun, easy way to ease back into being a book club, rather than a bunch of people who talk about be…more
[close] Light, fun, easy way to ease back into being a book club, rather than a bunch of people who talk about being a book club.

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Oct 17, 2009 Laura Floyd rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: my-library, fantasy, other-peoples-favorites

My four-star rating holds! I first read this book when I was 13(ish?), and rereading it was like ducking back into my young-adulthood in so many ways. It really did feel nostalgic, in a good way in almost every case. Almost like coming home. (As an adult, I'm more self-conscious about my reading choices - and who likes to admit to being such a huge Piers Anthony fan? The man is seedy! But so much fun...)

It's funny - I feel like I have very solid recollection of past reading projects, despite oft My four-star rating holds! I first read this book when I was 13(ish?), and rereading it was like ducking back into my young-adulthood in so many ways. It really did feel nostalgic, in a good way in almost every case. Almost like coming home. (As an adult, I'm more self-conscious about my reading choices - and who likes to admit to being such a huge Piers Anthony fan? The man is seedy! But so much fun...)

It's funny - I feel like I have very solid recollection of past reading projects, despite often being presented with evidence to the contrary. In this case, while I remembered the general premise of the book, it turns out I'd forgotten almost everything about the actual story beyond "Bink tries to discover his hidden magic talent." I'd forgotten Trent, I'd forgotten Chameleon, I'd even forgotten the Gap. I had perfect recollection of three very specific scenes/images: Bink talking down the cactus just outside of town, the salamander burning a self-extinguishing circle, and the description of the kid whose magic talent was changing the color of his urine.

The point of all that being, this was a very interesting exercise in examining my book memory. Why were those images so noteworthy to me, at 13?

The other interesting mental exercise was, knowing ahead of time what Bink's talent would be (that detail came back to me within a few pages), it was fascinating to see how Anthony foreshadowed the revelation. Did I notice as a 13-year-old, I wonder, the overabundant use of coincidence as a literary device? If I had been reading this for the first time now, would I have realized what Anthony was doing, or would I have been disgusted with him for using such an awful device over and over again until the revelation of its meaning at the end? (I'm an oblivious reader... I'm not sure what the answer is.) But the bit of foreshadowing that impressed me was how careful he was to describe the nature of magic within nature itself at the beginning: always designed for self-preservation and never without purpose. Does that make Bink a creature closer to nature than the spot-on-the-wall guys? I definitely missed this theme on my first run through, and it the question intrigues me this time.

And then there's the issue of Anthony's sexism. Written in the 70s, I'm not surprised by his rather casual attitude about rape (vis a vis the trial - not vis a vis "let's casually rape people" ...) and I've read enough of his other books to know how he feels about naked ladies (the more the merrier, and they're always sexier if at least partially clad). The very first sex scene I ever read in my life was in Isle of Woman. I feel like I never really noticed how sex-filled his books were until that point, and was therefore surprised by all the references to it in this novel. I guess being a dirty old man manifests early and just gets thicker with time. ;)

All in all, this was a delicious read, pure fun and hefty on the nostalgia. I can sense some additional wallowing in books 2 and 3 coming up. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Sep 05, 2014 Matthew Pike marked it as to-read

Shelves: fantasy, herd-of-nerds

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