Saturday 31 July 2004

Pic of the day: Lacking any illustrations in the e-book, I'll set the mood with this screenshot from the anime DearS. Ren-Ren-Ren hasn't yet learned that there are some things earthlings don't talk about openly. Wish Piers Anthony could learn that too.

"Key to Havoc" review

I've bought another e-book from fictionwise.com. Key to Havoc is the first in a new series by Piers Antony, one of the few fantasy writers who actually make a living from their writing. Piers Anthony is most famous for his Xanth series, a long run of children's books full of puns. Indeed, puns are part of the magic of Xanth. Even though he writes children's books, he is not talking down to the kids, and will often use long and rare words (but usually in such a way that they are explained, either by action or context or by one of the characters). A former English teacher, Anthony's love of the language is one of his most appealing traits. While I specialized in English during high school here in Norway, it was Piers Anthony and Stephen Donaldson who really taught me English. They expanded, extended and enhanced my vocabulary to the point where I could actually think in English.

Even though Anthony complains bitterly in his Author Notes that publishers want nothing from him except Xanth, the truth is that he has published many non-Xanth books before and even some in parallel with his ongoing Xanth series. In my opinion, his best series is Incarnations of Immortality. In this series, mortals temporarily hold supernatural offices such as Fate, Death, Time, Nature, War, Good and Evil. The awesome scope of their decisions, the responsibilities and them still being human ... it gives a whole new window on life. What would happen if Death refused to let people die? What would happen if War became pacifist? What if the Devil fell in love? In an entertaining yet deeply serious manner, Anthony explores that paradox of humanity: Being powerful and powerless at the same time.

More relevant perhaps is the Apprentice adept series, which takes place on a planet of dual nature. One aspect of it is magic, one technological. Each person has a soul twin on the other side, but normally they don't interact. On the magic side, Phaze, there are five types of magic each with one color and assigned to one element. Brown is earth and golems, for instance.

***

The color magic is expanded in his new series, ChroMagic. On the planet Charm, volcanoes of ten different colors create zones with ten different types of magic. (These are called "Chroma zones". Chromazones, got it? It's a chromosome pun!) People who live in one of these zones wield magic powers, but they are helpless when they stray outside their color. In the non-magic zones live "barbarians", although they are not very different apart from not using magic. But all these people are descendants of human colonists that arrived perhaps a thousand years ago. Plants and animals on Charm are more hostile than charming, and in order to survive and expand on this planet, the humans have adopted a culture of unabashed fecundism (an ideology that sees procreation as the prime virtue).

All adults on Charm are required to marry and have at least four children, their own or adopted. One of the four children must have a different parent, either through adultery or adoption, to make sure there is genetic diversity even in the smallest population unit. Children are encouraged to play erotic games from a while before puberty, and pre-marital sex is encouraged with the tacit understanding that whoever gets a girl pregnant should also marry her. However, sexual relations between adults and children are punishable by branding and exile for the adult, and in the harsh world exile is likely to mean a painful and lonely death.

It almost goes without saying that Anthony uses this setting as an excuse to let his main characters have hot passionate sex from the onset of puberty onward, with several attractive members of the opposite sex. While I wouldn't call the first novel (Key to Havoc) pornographic, it is certainly indecent. The story is otherwise pretty good, but I really would have liked to read more about the magic system and less about the slippery clefts. Well, pardon my language, but that's the level of subtlety in this novel. You are NOT going to buy this for your kids along with the Xanth books if I can stop you. But once you realize that it's an adult novel, it's a fairly good piece of writecraft. I think I could have handled the erotic parts with more subtlety myself, but he may just be right that people are that sex- crazed and shallow. Well, at least men. Still, I consider this the main weakness of the book. Blessed with divine resistance to gross and vulgar sex scenes, I'm likely to buy the next book too when it comes to Fictionwise. But it's not his best work ever. Then again, his best works are pretty good.