Apoca lips down:

Thank goodness, the book is over and done with.  It retreaded the solution to every previous Xanth book -- give the Demons souls so that they become good people who stop troubling Xanth.  We hardly needed another example of this plot device given the plethora of previous ones.  It's also a silly solution given that humans have souls on Earth but that doesn't stop them from universally supporting the genocidal war criminals of Ukraine, or mandated deadly vaccines, or gain of function bioweapon research, or requiring children to be masked in school when all scientific studies have already shown the masks to be pointless and harmful to children's development.  When have souls done humanity any good?  We torture and murder children freely and then brag about what good people we are afterwards.  The president of Ukraine, Poroshenko, bragged on a press interview that he was shelling kindergartens in Donetsk.  We are bragging about our support for that very regime, fighting the people whose only goal is to stop the shelling of kindergartens in Donetsk.  Souls aren't good.  Consciences don't work.  Sophistry can elude all pangs of guilt and delusions can handle the rest.  Teachers are bragging on YouTube daily about how many impressionable elementary school kids they convinced to mutilate their bodies.  Where are their souls?  Where are the souls of the society who does nothing to save these kids from said teachers?

Nevermind.  I have another complaint with this book.  Any good story is about characters navigating tough decisions and coming out ahead through their wit or valor.  It's important for the main character to be given decisions and the power to make a meaningful difference once they have decided.  This is why so many main characters have super strength or are royalty.  But it's also why all main characters are given forks in the road with ambiguous tradeoffs -- perhaps one option helps one group while the other option helps another.  Or perhaps one path is more dangerous but more rewarding.  And so on.  But this book forswears all that and literally keeps the main character on the 'right path' from beginning to end.  I am not kidding.  There is a girl with a magic talent, Vinia, that can tell which path to take in all situations to end up with a favorable result.  All you have to do is listen to her and robotically follow her directions from beginning to end.  And they actually, genuinely, literally did that, all book long.

Before Noland meets Vinia he is directed by Good Magician Humfrey exactly where to go, what to do and who to marry, and he of course just follows those directions too, which of course work out perfectly.  This is not how stories are done!  This is ludicrous!  The main character never made a single choice, he was on rails from beginning to end!

This is one of the laziest books ever written -- rehashed plot, no difficult decisions, no interior minds, no insecurity or emotional struggle with anything.  And to think I have to pay money to read this book but no one pays me money to read mine.  Barely anyone reads my books for free.  This is because the majority of mankind celebrates and brags about torturing and murdering children, so it's no wonder they prefer awful books to good ones.  Actually, if I were popular, I would start worrying that I was doing something wrong.  When the world is this steeped in evil only the 'road less traveled' offers any solace.