Customer Reviews

Faun and Games

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Another trip to Xanth, a new trip to Ptero. The Xanth books always had a fairy tale quality to them. Yes they get predictable, but so does every fairy tale. the good guy wins, the bad guy loses, we have fun along the way, and all's well.

The puns are numerous but do they really detract from the story? Not really, if you can't handle this, then you probably should read any of the Xanth books period. The pun strips are overflowing with puns, but guess what? That was the idea

To the story, we find a decent faun made good by his association with his tree, helped by a nightmare gone soft. Later, he's accompanied by two lovely princesses out for a good time but in the middle of a crisis so the good times will have to wait.
This journey takes them into a series of moons upon moons. The journey was not so much tedious, but the shift of planes gets disjointed. I suppose some people can't handle that. If you require your stories to stay effectively in a single plane of existence then be warned this book travels around.
That having been said is the story predictable. If that above is what you've expect when you pick up a book then I guess yes it is, I didn't. I suppose in a xanthy kind of way however, you can guess certain things. There will be an appropriately goofy manner of resolving the problem and a somewhat goofy problem
... The first 8 books are so detailed a xanth somewhat in strife. The magician trent had just taken over for the storm king, and the dark age of xanth had just ended, soon to enter a new golden era. The earlier books had more realistic problems and quests (search for the source of magic, considering the place is Xanth its not that unrealistic of a quest).
Truly in many ways the earlier novels, not the later ones, were the typical and predictable tales. They took a new world with plenty of potential but used more common fantasy themes, example, the lone warrior fighting dragons and other terrors of the fantasy wild.
Later novels, this time had ended, the tales involve more personal quests of individual characters. The stories became less about missions and more about the journeys, and the quests became by-products of a journey of greater character growth, the quest became a backdrop.
Similarly the character views changed scope. Older novels tended to be scoped from the overview perspective. Newer novels I find to be more based on a single character. The other characters will be crafted and molded around this character. Thus to those people out there who expect the story to tell all, then yes the character in the newer Xanth novels will seem shallow and uneventful. Their true depth becomes evident when you understand how they change through the eyes of the main character of the novel
I think if you view Xanth as you would other fantasy books, you'll think the characters are shallow, as you will be seeing the characters as simply the participants of the quests. But I think Xanth should be approached more from the aspect of the character being the story, and the quest is the backdrop.
This book is somewhat of a fine example of this. Ultimately (sorry to ruin the story) but the quest was meaningless. Forrest Faun's journey did nothing to solve his initial problem. But the journey that his quest took him on caused him to change, and this caused him to find what he was looking for and then some.
If you look to the quest to be the tale, then yes, Faun and Games is a disappointing book, and the ending would be rather empty. The quest leads nowhere
If you look to the faun to be the story, then you see the growth and the depth of characters that was there in all of Piers Anthony's books.

This book was wonderful! Brillant! Amazing! A beautiful book for all ages to read. I highly recommend this book, and all other Peirs Anthony Novels. My parents love them, my uncle loves them, my friends love them, and I love them too. They are a wonderful part of non-reality. Read if you dare.

I am a huge Piers Anthony fan. Faun & Games was a delightful story, but it became a bit hard to follow from moon to moon. The concept of Ida's moon is a bit more far fetched than most of Pier's story lines. All in all it was a wonderful book.

I've just finished reading Faun & Games and have over the years read every Xanth novel before it. I gotta say, here was a setting with a fair amount of potential. Exploring Ptero had so much possibility. A world of might-bes. Unfortunately, the author seems to have just exploited it as a means to including as many of his readers Xanthine suggestions as he could, designing a loose plot around this catalogue. Please try harder Piers I know you can do better.

I looked forward to this book, chiefly because it featured one of my favorite Xanth characters, Day Mare Imbri, and so spent a bit of time hunting down a copy; now that I've had a chance to read it, all I can say is I wish it were a bit better.

It begins off with a good start and not too many distractions, introducing Forrest Faun and his situation before bringing Imbri in; their initial quest to the moon of Ptero (which circles Princes Ida's head) is interesting and fun, and watching Forrest "grow" as a character is nicely paced. Imbri gets some good word time in taking the form of a clothed nymph, and like Forrest, is seen to grow as a character above and beyond her first appearance.

Then we hit the middle, and meet the 18 year old twin Princesses, Dawn and Eve, and the book gets bogged down badly. Despite a major threat (extinction level) to the humans of Ptero that the girls are meant to solve, they can't seem to be bothered to think of anything more than sex--ALL THE BLOODY TIME. The next several chapters read like this: one or both twins seduce (or attempt to seduce) Forrest/face a challenge/seduce Forrest/face a challenge, repeat. Once is funny; twice is boring; after that it just becomes grating. While Anthony tries to write this as Forrest "learning about emotions" it fails horribly, and comes across instead as little more than an adult fanfic. It's a shame, because in the past Anthony managed to give his Princesses depth, but of late they've been little more than shallow sex addicts (even at ages they should have no interest in it), with a decidedly unpleasant "edge" to them that borders on threatening. Figure to read a good 50 pages or more like this as you hit the middle of the book, before they part ways and the story again picks up. Also, don't expect to see much of Imbri in these chapters; she's relegated primarily to the side, and almost forgotten.

"Faun & Games" illustrates that at times this otherwise great series can stumble; that's to be expected of any book series, and if you can manage to get through the tedious middle, the rest is worth reading.

Xanth #21: Faun & Games, by Piers Anthony

When Branch Faun is lost to the Void, his friend Forrest embarks on a quest to find a replacement before Branch's tree dies. Like all Xanth protagonists, he goes to visit Good Magician Humfrey with his Question, and his resulting adventure sends him to the world of Ptero.

Forrest is paired with Imbri, a nightmare who used to deliver bad dreams but then got a soul and became a daydream delivering mare. The two travel to Ptero, which is a moon orbiting Princess Ida's head. Ptero is the place where all people who might ever be born on Xanth wait to be delivered by storks. Ptero follows Xanth is some aspects - full of puns and magic, but also different. Geography is time on the moon, if you travel in one direction you become younger, the other, older. So people on Ptero are restricted in travel by their age range.

In the course of his Quest to find a new faun for Branch's tree, Forrest saves Ptero from marginalization, struggles to overcome his faun-ly feelings for the twin princesses Dawn and Eve, and starts to fall in love. Like most Xanth characters, Forrest comes to realize the true value of his Answer is in the journey it prompts, not the actual Answer itself.

This is a solid entry in the Xanth series; I'm not particularly a fan of it but neither is it horrible. The concept of Ptero is a little farfetched, but it also gives Anthony a new direction to expand in. There are maybe a few too many puns; I sometimes wonder if Anthony created comic strips to use up readers suggestions, but then of course puns are an integral part of Xanth.

3/5.

In my opinion this is not one of the better Xanth books. It sort of drags along but some interesting and good things happen. As for those who continue to complain that there are too many puns all I can say is "then quit reading them unless you like to be unhappy"!!!

Faun and Games by Piers Anthony is about an almost unbelievably decent faun named Forrest. Although, he cannot resist his faunish nature, he endures with two or three lovely creatures on a quest to save a friend's tree. They discover several different worlds to find that one special faun. At last, Forrest finds the spirit to fill in the tree and, also, gets more than he's asked for.

This book was not the best of Piers Anthony's books. I found the book to be not as alluring as all of his books before, since it just brought some points that seemed rather predictable and unrealistic for me to believe. In the World of Xanth, things can get pretty unbelievable, but in this case, it was ridiculus and needs a change of personality of some characters to make things more interesting than sexually alluring.

I find that Faun & Games would be a fair novel because of the introductions of new and interesting worlds that I find appealing and of the introductions for future expectations of new characters that drew my attention for further novels.

Faun & Games has easily become one of my favorite Xanth books ever! It has one of the best stories ever conjured for Xanth; taking you from planet to planet...literally!

Faun & Games is about a faun who's friend falls over a cliff while playing with a nymph...he sets off to find the tree a companion and is soon lauched into worlds/planets surrounding a woman's head! Sounds great and it is great! Enjoy!

I enjoyed the premise of the book, as I almost always do with Piers Anthony's Xanth books. But there are just getting to be too many puns. The obvious plot devices (like the comic strip) that serve as simply a way to work in all of the puns that the fans send in, is just too much.