Xanth: Difference between revisions

What do you get when you take a rather witty American author, create a [[Fictional Counterpart]] of the ''entire state of Florida'' (with the small change of everyone having magical powers -- a ''Magic Kingdom,'' geddit?), and fill it with various parodies of fantasy tropes (as well as literally hundreds of reader-submitted puns)?

 

 

Xanth takes place in a small Florida-shaped realm that is sealed off from the rest of Earth. On Xanth, magic is real, with its own physical laws, often based on reader-submitted (and credited) puns. Billions, and billions of puns. For example -- Pineapples? They're essentially hand grenades. Cherries (Cherry bombs) are smaller, but still dangerous. Tulips (two lips) will kiss you if you get too close. Boot Rear is a fizzy soda that, when drunk, causes you to feel a swift kick to your bottom. And beware the Catastrophe -- a plaque with the back half a cat stuck into it (a Cat-ass-trophy).

One important rule for Xanth is that every single native-born Xanth human [[Everyone Is a Super|has a unique "talent"]] -- a magical quirk that only they can do. This can be anywhere from [[Kaleidoscope Hair|changing their hair color]], to being able to talk to certain animals, to being able to rewind time or warp reality in their nearby vicinity. Talents are unique to the person who has them -- no two talents are the same, but some are so similar that they are more or less identical; "turn stuff blue" versus "turn stuff azure", for example.

 

 

Xanth has long been criticized for being a novel series for young teens that does not shy away from (rather frequent) depictions of nudity and slightly sexual situations despite his character's typical younger ages, to the point that his harshest critics have called him an outright pedophile. Anthony has waved off such criticisms as being nonsense, pointing out that most teenagers do not openly talk about "naughty things" with adults but are certainly not as innocent and pure as most adults would like to think, and while his books are written for the young adult market they can be [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|read on several levels]], so whereas the youngest readers wouldn't notice anything, [[Parental Bonus|older readers might get the more subtle jokes]].

As an interesting aside, Mr. Anthony talks frequently about his experiences in using the Linux operating system to write novels, which earned him an [http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/14/1854209&mode=thread&tid=99 interview with Slashdot]. Another small point is the Jenny Elf character -- one of his fans' parents wrote to him to talk about her daughter being paralyzed in a car accident, she's recovered, slowly, over the years -- he wrote her into the series and spends a few pages in most novels' author notes talking about how her life has been lately. He even collected his letters to Jenny in a book -- ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20120516065538/http://jimloy.com/books/jenny.htm Letters to Jenny]''.

 

 

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