Piers Anthony’s A Spell for Chamelion
Another book from my childhood, (the entire series took me well into my adulthood to finish it,) is A Spell for Chameleon. It’s part of Piers Anthony’s Xanth trilogy. Only as I started typing that did I remember it began as a trilogy. I reread it yesterday because like necroscope I was curious what I’d think of it now versus reading it as a child.
Potential spoilers.
The story covers a seemingly non-magical main character named Bink through a magical land on a mission to figure out what his magical talent is so that he wont be exiled from the land of Xanth because that’s what they did to anyone born without a demonstrable magical talent. Everyone has a ceremony after their (18th?) birthday to demonstrate their magical talent in front of the king, after which they become a citizen of Xanth. Unless they don’t have a talent. In which case they are exiled to Mundania. The story begins just before his exile, covers his journey through Xanth, then his exile, and his return to Xanth,
Also like Necroscope, I read this one around fifth grade sometime. Definitely before 8th grade, but later than 4th.
Overall, it was Okay. I remembered it being very enjoyable as a child, but I’d only say it was enjoyable this time around. If not for my interest in the different perspective, there wasn’t a lot going on in the story. It opened in a simple fashion, spelled everything out for the reader, and progressed at a decent pace.
There weren’t a lot of hidden themes but the story was quite coherent. The author spent a fair amount of time laying out the work in a very straightforward fashion and it was a smooth read. I imagine it reads like any young adult book would?
I recall having some trouble fully digesting the omen that the story begins with and seeing how it fits in the overall story. I had no such trouble this go around. It’s another one of those things that the author spells right out and explains the pieces over and over as they come up in the story.
I had forgotten about the Wiggles as one of the sources of conflict and source of an achievement to count in the Evil Magician’s favor. Just flat out did not remember them at all. By the end of the story I wasn’t sure if I was starting to remember them or if it was just a sort of reconstructed memory instead of actual recall.
I was glad to finally see that the adult conspiracy was not mentioned at all in the work. I had an impression that it was sort of ret-conned into the lore later in the series, so I feel a bit vindicated that it wasn’t mentioned in the first novel. It would have been appropriate for it to come up, as human reproduction is an element of the adult conspiracy and it comes up a few times in the story.
Unlike while reading Necroscope last week, while reading this yesterday I didn’t have as many Oh yeah, this is where I remember X! When Bink encounters Chameleon for the first time I knew who she was right away. Though I couldn’t remember her real name. I also recognized her on her third appearance. I completely missed her second appearance! Speaking of forgotten characters, I had completely forgotten about Crombie! I think it was Crombie’s impression of her that discouraged me from putting two and two together. Most of the others I did recognize and I was anticipating their arrival for their various roles, even though i was foggy on the details of what those roles were.
I also didn’t recall the Evil Magician having such a major role in the novel. I thought he played a small part, but quite a bit of the story is devoted Bink’s time with him. Bink spends a tremendous amount of time trying to overcome his internal bias and what he has learned of the Evil Magician until he begrudgingly becomes an ally. An annoyingly long amount of time was spent on that. I found it a bit odd because given Bink’s age, he should still have been in adolescence and more willing to reject the impressions of the Evil Magician based on the evidence he was obtaining first-hand. Yeah, he was old enough to have a decent moral compass, and he demonstrated strong ethics, to the point where he takes a stand on them at one point. But still, I felt like he held onto the misconception for too long. And then once he seemed like he was going to move past it he still needed a push.
This will sound weird, but I thought the last page of the story was awkwardly written. It was like I had missed a line of dialog somewhere or a description that would have brought it together better.
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created: 2025-05-06
(re)generated: 2025-05-25
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