Knot Gneiss, by Piers Anthony

I saw the latest Xanth offering at the Library and I didn't have very many other books to take home so I figured, "meh, why not". At least I wasn't paying for it, right?

The book is done in the standard formula: Querent goes to Magician Humfrey, Querent gets assigned a Task that is far too hard and complicated for their simple stupid Answer, they take it anyway because of course they're the Only One That Can Accomplish This Vitally Necessary Task, they collect a bunch of people along the way and finish their task with no time to spare.
In this case, it's a knot of Petrified Reverse Wood that must be moved / removed from the Gap Chasm and delivered to Humfrey.

This book dumps our subjects into Ida's Alternate Worlds a few times, but thankfully does not, for the first time in a LONG time, end with "good thing you did the Task because this was all another Demon Contest and if you'd failed the Land of Xanth would have no magic / belong to another Demon / fall apart / etc."

The ending was odd, to say the very least, and made me go, "wait...what just happened?"

I did think that the books have been getting more "stereotypical" in their handling of the gender relationships. This one was bordering on offensive - all men, bar none, are mindless one-dimensional boors, obsessed with one thing and one thing only - sex. This is of course unless they are friends of the protagonist and are required to be multi-dimensional. But husbands? Are always, always, always interested in one thing from their wives. While the concept of "a man still finding his wife to be HAWT" is very nice, the idea that that is all they think their wife is good for is obnoxious. The only thing that changes a man from Obnoxious One Dimensional Boor Husband into Loving Wonderful Multi-Dimensional Husband With Many And Varied Interests (really, what turns him into a human being) is HAVING CHILDREN. Because of course everyone knows this is the only thing that gives life meaning or higher purpose.

Women, on the other hand, are portrayed as HAWT, flirtatious, and only interested in giving their husbands What They Want so the women can get on with their interesting, multi-dimensional lives. Interaction of an intellectual, friend-to-friend sort must of necessity take place outside the marriage because the husband is a sex-crazed idiot. To this end, they are manipulative and scheming, and all too willing to leave their husbands behind - except of course for the obligatory Nightly Conjugal Visit (10 minutes or less "should be enough", right?) And, of course, any woman that makes it past age 20 or so without Having A Man is completely Washed Up And Useless. All women, naturally therefore, want only to Get A Man, and then Have Children - because only by Having A Man and then Having Children will her life have any meaning.

While these attitudes have been expressed in the Xanth series before, generally they were merely alluded to, or expressed in a more sarcastic or "jokey" manner. However, in this book, they were obviously more "intended", so to speak, and that's what I found offensive. They're getting more and more obvious, and more and more blatant.

In sum: Latest Xanth book is "meh" for the plot (what there is of it), offensive for the misandry and misogyny, the ending is arbitrary but thankfully does not have any Demon Contest inclusions, so I give it a "whatever" out of 5. 1.5 bones I suppose.

"Air Apparent", by Piers Anthony (Xanth Novel)

SYNOPSIS: Hugo (Humfrey and the Gorgon's son) has disappeared. A mysterious body is found in the cellar of the Good Magician's Castle in his place. The Book of Answers is completely scrambled - and it's up to Wira, Hugo's wife (who is blind) to fix it all.

THOUGHTS: Convenient plot device, the scrambling of the Book of Answers. That was the best explanation for the complete absence of any cohesion or consistency in this book - nobody had any idea what they were doing. Unfortunately, the book also read as though the author was included in that group.

It started out fine - laying out the problem of Hugo's disappearance and Wira's reaction. However, it went rapidly downhill. Several elements were introduced that hadn't even been hinted at before. Hugo and Wira have had a spell on them preventing the storks from receiving any signals from them? Really? Who set it? Why? None of that's explained. It's just introduced as a handy MacGuffin to get Hugo into the basement for some Rhed Whine (to celebrate the Good Magician lifting the anti-stork-geas).
Hugo's problems with conjuring bad fruit are explained too. He couldn't possibly be just "not quite bright", oh, no, he's the victim of a seed of a mediocritree, which has been lodged in his ear for his entire life. Wait, what? How did that get there? No, no, no...on second thought I don't want to know. Really. His history indicates he's pretty much always been a little...slow...so I really don't want to know how that seed got into his ear.
I must say, though, that the bathing rituals in Xanth seem to be a little lacking, if he's managed to get through over 40 years of life with a seed in his ear, and nobody has even noticed (including him).

The Point-of-view cuts from Wira's Story to Hugo's are terribly abrupt and completely interrupt the flow of the story. Every single time the story jumped from POV to POV, I got jolted out of the story and had to take a few paragraphs to try to figure out what the heck was going on. Not a good thing if you're trying to enjoy the book. I found it more irritating than enjoyable, overall.

I did, however, quite enjoy seeing more of Happy Bottom and Fray, as they took strong supporting roles in this book. Their adventures were quite enjoyable to read.

The ending...oh my gosh, the ending. Do yourself a favor. Don't bother. Really. The ending winds up linking all of Ida's moons into an endless loop, and breaking the Earth / Xanth interface link forever. Sort of. Except through the moons. Yeah, it makes no sense.

And -WHAT a shock- the whole story is just another Demon contest. Wow, that plot device hasn't been used for every single book in the Xanth series lately. Seriously, when was the last time a Demon contest wasn't involved somehow???

Overall, I obviously didn't enjoy this one very much, and I may be giving the Xanth books a miss from now on.

BOOK RATING: 1.5 bones out of 5. And that's just because of the bits with Happy Bottom & Fray.