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Oh god. These books. gently caress. And this early one was one of the ones with an actual plot (if you define plot loosely). Later on I think his outlines devolved into lists of puns and namedropping and weird fetishes.
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Jul 26, 2013 01:48
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This was the first one in the series I ever read, on account of there was a griffin on the cover. In hindsight, I should have thrown the drat thing out the window. I forget, are there any female characters who aren't immediately evaluated by how hot they are or aren't? Or any with personalities other than "nagging shrew" or "dumb as a post"? What am I saying. Are there any characters with personalities? They all come off as flat cardboard cutouts working with the exact same pool of vocal tics and train of internal logic and Bink's one unique personality trait is that he allegedly gets bored with hot chicks. God, this is the Dominic Deegan of published literature.
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Jul 26, 2013 21:33
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Hahaha yes he is, of course, ~honor-bound~ to pursue the date with the underaged dead girl instead of grabbing a lonely-looking fellow by the shoulder and pointing him off in the right direction. Bink you are literally the worst husband. And after Millie's intro described her as a teenager, too. Jesus, Piers. I think she gets her own prequel book at some point.
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Jul 27, 2013 13:57
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And thus we enter full tilt into another Xanth staple: a magical obstacle which can only be defeated by flinging insults at it. He does this once or twice per book at the very least. It gets kind of weird.
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Jul 30, 2013 14:35
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The hero punches through a lady's wall, scares the living daylights out of her, fucks up her work for the day and refuses to leave when asked, then finishes up by sexually assaulting her... And naturally she falls head over heels for him anyway because ??? For all Anthony's claims to be totally in tune with ~female logic~ he should know that after that kind of introduction the typical response would be calling the loving cops, not inviting the grabby creep into her house.
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Jul 31, 2013 23:04
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You missed three right when the cluster of plant puns broke out. God, this love potion is the laziest plot device. All the drama and whining of a classic love triangle without having to develop Jewel's character enough to give a reason for Bink to be in love with her.
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Aug 1, 2013 06:27
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There's so much wrong with that whole love spring plan I don't even know where to begin. There's so much wrong with this entire book I don't even know where to begin.
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Aug 2, 2013 19:11
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LordAba posted:Thinly veiled erection jokes and puns. So it begins! Yes. There was. I'm not sure what was worse, when he just had people strut about buck naked for chapters or when he started to get coy about things with the storks and the panties and the ellipses. Possibly because people complained about his books, because that's also the point where he breaks out in a lot of railing against ~moral guardians~ and the like. I think one of the books was about a stork who objected bringing a baby to a couple because one of them was an underaged girl. The stork was the villain of the piece, naturally.
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Aug 3, 2013 06:58
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And it was actually a halfway decent book for about a chapter. Looks like it's time for more flagrant sexism!
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Aug 3, 2013 20:26
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And Jumper continues to be the best aspect of the book.
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Aug 4, 2013 19:43
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Oh god. Of course the race of ultra sexed-up nymphomaniacs are all mentally children forever. Dammit, Anthony.
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Aug 5, 2013 22:52
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A female character with a talent that's not all about beauty! Two, counting Irene earlier. Of course, they're both almost immediately compared unfavorably to guys with the closest comparative talent. It's only been those two who get that treatment. You didn't get anyone going, "Oh, Crombie's sorta okay but he can't compare to the immense knowledge of Humphery" "Grundy can talk to living things but Dor's obviously so much better because there's way more inanimate objects out there". And for that matter, does any female character have any ambition that isn't just "find a man"? I mean, aside from Jewel but she got brainwashed out of that right quick. Vadne's pretty awesome, and yet all she seems to want is to attach herself to a powerful magician via marriage. Same for Iris way back in book one. Millie? Started off mooning over Dor, and the instant he rejected her (because she already ~belonged~ to someone else), she attached herself to the Zombie Master as a consolation prize. I can't believe I read this whole loving series and missed so many of the skeezy gender politics in it. Edit: And then when I was typing this up, Vadne committed a gruesome crime on account of falling in love with an old man because he complimented her. Alopex fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 17:34
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Well on one hand it's nice Trent recognizes that his daughter has a sex drive and isn't getting all "shotgun and chastity belt" about it but holy poo poo could he be any creepier? Considering that Dor's the acting King he should probably be delegating that thing with Trent vanishing to someone more experienced. Obviously he's not going to.
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Aug 7, 2013 18:40
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Check out all this convenient wrapping up of loose ends by which I mean everyone starts getting married because that is the only thing women are after in Xanth.
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Aug 15, 2013 05:18
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Tezzor posted:It's nice that he got rid of the weird racial purity angle. I don't think that comes up ever again. On the other hand it's substituted with everyone loving everything that'll hold still long enough to the point where half the new character introductions come with list of what four varying species their grandparents were.
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Aug 16, 2013 06:05
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Any male was impressive in the realm of equus, for the real power lay with the few stallions. "Logic has never been the strong point of females." Really. Really, Anthony? You're dragging in the sexism poo poo with horses now? Fun fact: Wild horses are led by a boss mare. The stallion's duties are to fight off predators, make sure the younger horses don't wander off, and sire the next generation. He's entirely replaceable. The boss is the boss because she's experienced, knows the herd territory, and won't get chased off in the silly stallion dominance contests. gently caress, that even happened last book. If Smash had taken over, he wouldn't have known poo poo about dream administration. You'd think a guy with such a big horse fetish would know more about 'em. Edit: While I'm at it, note that the dude protagonists have always been 100% competent and devoted to their mission. First time with a female protagonist, she bonks her head walking into a tree and skips off to chase rainbows. Yes, we are off to a fine start.
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Aug 16, 2013 14:19
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Tezzor posted:They only have 1000 men with swords to conquer a land the size of Florida where everyone and everything has magic powers? Nope. They have 800. And three elephants.
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Aug 17, 2013 06:12
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Oh wow, that's even worse. Especially given that the last Mundane invasion they took down with like five people and a big spider. While fighting two other wars at the same time. This threat hasn't really been given a lot of weight so far. As for humans... there's also been the curse fiends and that creepy rape trial village from the first book. Populations and locations seem to appear and vanish book to book.
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Aug 17, 2013 13:48
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This is a lot more tolerable without the sexism and sexualization cropping up everywhere. I haven't enjoyed a chapter this much since Jumper's intro.
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Aug 19, 2013 04:05
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Chem was brunette/brown a couple books ago. It was mentioned like half a dozen times in the gourd sequence alone. And now she's inexplicably blonde. I know this guy can't even keep personalities straight, but you'd think with how much emphasis he puts on the appearance of every last female character he'd be able to track that much.
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Aug 19, 2013 18:34
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The tendency of Xanthians to swiftly resort to insults when meeting neutral parties that could harm them resurfaces once again.
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Aug 20, 2013 07:42
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That is the tackiest retcon I've ever seen.
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Aug 22, 2013 23:57
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I enjoyed large parts of that book. It'd be a fun light read appropriate for children of all ages if it weren't for all the weird sex and sexism. And man, Fracto came out of nowhere. That's what happens when you hop all of Xanth around insulting all the local magical beings for no reason.
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Aug 23, 2013 15:04
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So this is where the storks start being a thing. And sadly, where Dolph also starts being a thing. (Dolph is terrible.)
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Aug 23, 2013 23:40
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All I remember about this one is the big plot twist and also some uncomfortable sexual threats.
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Aug 24, 2013 00:45
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Reminder that the framing device here is that this is a story being told to a five year old girl. If I were Jordan, I'd leave about the bits about the fish rape. Seriously, man, even for a barbarian. He just watched the poor thing get chased around and get caught only because she warned him about the shelfish? I know Anthony sets the bar pretty low for likeable protagonists but this is fairly bad.
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Aug 25, 2013 22:50
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Christ, not this honor poo poo again. This isn't even the stupidest example of it in the series. It's like all his protagonists think that if they promise something it becomes an objective law of reality. ...Unless, of course, in Jordan's case, they're promising it to their fiancee.
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Aug 26, 2013 07:46
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Yeah, this is the part I remember. Of course she's already fallen for him in the same chapter he kidnaps her and threatens to rape her. And then she casually tells him her talent in detail. Yeah this is gonna be a romance for the ages.
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Aug 26, 2013 15:47
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 : The Series
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Aug 26, 2013 17:53
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Robindaybird posted:I think this is the predecessor to that one scene in The Instruments of Immortality where there's two women, one gets turned into a man, and immediately rapes her friend, gets turned back, the victim naturally was pissed, then Nyx turned her into a man, and she rapes the other woman. After they turned back, they basically went 'oh, I see that men just can't help themselves, so can't hold it against them'  Every time I think he's reached the absolute nadir of good taste he finds a way to go even lower.
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Aug 27, 2013 20:26
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I see we have reached the point at which the fatally weakened plot is overtaken and consumed by ceaseless lists of puns.
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Aug 28, 2013 00:53
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You'd think someone thousands of years old would have a bit more common sense.
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Aug 30, 2013 03:10
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Why does it take Threnody an hour to do each change again? Didn't Jordan figure a way around that last book or so?
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Aug 31, 2013 19:06
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Please note that all of Rapunzel's fretting about her hair has been along the lines of "oh no I don't look ~pretty~ now" and she's said nothing at all about the loss of a moderately useful magical power. ...Why did she even cut it that short in the first place? There was like, an entire towersworth of it flopping about, and it's much easier to cut something at arms length than it is to cut it clean and close to your head and neck. I mean, I know Anthony doesn't know much about female anatomy beyond "tits and legs" but everybody has hair.
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Aug 31, 2013 22:52
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So, Eskil's dad and mom have a history of murdering demons and being sexually assaulted by them, respectively. He knows this, and he doesn't tell them about being sexually assaulted by a demon himself because he's afraid his mother will beat him up for it. That's kind of hosed up, Anthony.
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Sep 2, 2013 15:17
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Mors Rattus posted:Esk would be willing to perform alternate service, especially in the company of some young woman resembling his mother in certain respects. I know it's pretty much a law of nature to mention how hot a female character is every time she shows up in the narrative but you'd think that family members would be an exception.
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Sep 2, 2013 18:00
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JackMann posted:Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Something occurs to me. Chem met Xap during Dragon on a Pedestal. Ivy was three years old. Ivy is still described as "a little girl." So this centaur girl , whose "pectorals" Anthony takes great joy in describing, is less than ten years old. I thought centaurs aged slower than humans. Not only that, but her uncle and grandpa are pretty openly checking her out. At this point I think the stories are reaching the point where the content is divided equally between plot, puns, sexism, and reiterating the plot of the last several books. Seriously, every last person introduces themselves by listing off all the characters from the last several books they're related to. It's obviously not just a Xanth custom, since nobody without cameo parents does it. Bink didn't introduce himself as "son of Roland and Bianca", Volney doesn't introduce himself as "son of Vanessa Vole and Varney Vole" or whatever. I know the books revolve around certain characters but that's no excuse to be so blatantly transparent about it. gently caress, Rapunzel doesn't even talk about her immediate birth parents, but she knows that she's descended from Bluebell somehow.
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Sep 3, 2013 21:11
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Latia is approaching Jumper levels of being a pretty okay character.
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Sep 6, 2013 14:42
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Oh god it's Dor's  prepubescent sexual adventures all over again.
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Sep 8, 2013 20:18
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I remember it being bad but I didn't remember it starting this early or this extreme. Also I forgot he was only nine loving years old.
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Sep 8, 2013 22:17
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