Author: Piers Anthony
Themes: Puberty
Quote: "Sometimes what you have is better than what you thought you wanted."
Reading/Listening Time: 12 hours, 50 minutes
Review:
This story is about a kid from this magic place who got caught by his mother "Sowing his wild oats" (Which is I guess a magically term for masturbating), and kinda goes on a journey to understand what his sex drive is for. There's also a thing where he hasn't figured out what his magic talent is, and he has to find it or else he'll be exiled to our world.
The format of the book is really episodic, a lot of it is just him going from one magical landscape to the next and seeing how it works. It has kind of an "Alice and Wonderland" feeling to it.
And then he meets Chameleon as a kind of re-occurring character in these episodes and she ends up being kind of significant because she is the sort of dynamic challenge the protagonist needs in his life. The problem is Chameleon is being presented from a really sexist perspective: she's either pretty and mentally retarded or ugly and a smart jerkface. It was really uncomfortable to read the bit when *SPOILER ALERT** He has sex with her in her pretty/mentally retarded phase. Like, that's kinda rapey...
[END SPOILER]
The book is definitely marketed for teenage boys, just with the style of humor and everything. And I guess the overall point is showing how a dynamic relationship can be healthy (Even the bad guys get less bad when they're in a dynamic relationship, and they work together to achieve goals without being total arses about it.) Is a good one, but, like, I definitely wouldn't want this to be my non-existent son's first exposure to these types of issues.
Rating: 3/5 (It's probably more like a 2/5 and I was feeling particularly generous that day.)
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