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Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Three Novel Nymphs read:

The latest Xanth book by Piers Anthony, age 90, came out yesterday, and I managed to finish reading it today.  There is nothing new in this book.  As usual, they follow Vinia's 'paths' that tell them exactly where to go at all times in order to succeed at any task they care to undertake, thus not having to think for themselves or be competent at anything.

As usual, the romances occur within seconds of meeting and then carry on happily ever after.  As usual, the root of the problem is a conflict between Demons, and as usual the solution is to give the stupid Demon a lecture on common sense, which the Demon as usual accepts and stops doing mischief thereby.

As usual, the gay Santo is still hanging out with his girlfriend, because Piers is a pussy who won't actually make his gay character gay.

As usual, Bryce still hasn't married Harmony, the one unresolved plot thread in the series.

As usual there are dumb puns.  As usual Demoness Metria is one of the major characters.  As usual the main character comes from humble origins and thinks of themselves in a humble manner, but displays remarkable gumption when the situation calls for it.  It's like the story could write itself.  Or like what an AI would write if told to write a Xanth book.

Gone are the days when Mare Imbrium would organize a resistance to a Mundane invasion in a Xanth-wide war with multiple important characters becoming casualties one after the next.  Or when an unsuspecting Mundane would enter the world of Xanth thinking it was a virtual reality game and insist that none of the magic was really real.  All original plots are long gone.  Now we just have this template nonsense from a 90 year old.

And as typical of a 90 year old, he's completely incapable of independent thought.  In the Author's Note, he whines about how people didn't stay masked at all times and children were allowed to go to school when they should have been locked down -- completely ignoring all the data showing that kids not going to school and masks didn't work.  He also ignored his own anecdotal evidence by complaining that he caught Covid despite wearing a mask and social distancing at all times.  That should have clued him in that maybe social distancing and masks can't prevent the spread of Covid, but no, instead he doubles down and insists that it wasn't done hard enough.  Like a proper member of the Gestapo or Stasi.

And of course, his senile mind can't comprehend that maybe America and Ukraine were in the wrong instead of Russia, lapping up American propaganda like a trained hound and repeating it verbatim: 'Russia has committed savage atrocities in Ukraine!'  Yeah, like what?  You mean when they raped, tortured, mutilated and murdered dozens of young and old women and left their corpses to rot in basements?  That savage atrocity?  Oh, sorry, that was the Ukrainians in the Kursk region.  Try again.  'Russia has left the family of civilized nations!'  Oh wait, sorry, that was Israel when they openly bragged about intentionally starving a million children to death in Gaza.  Of course Piers, the trained poodle, has nothing to say about the savage atrocities Israel does to the Palestinians, like headshotting toddlers with sniper rifles for fun.  No, he saves all his opprobrium for Russia, who is fighting the war with the most lopsided civilian to military casualty ratio in the history of the world.  The most civilized war in history is the only one that gets up his ire.

I have nothing good to say about this book or this author, but I still plan to keep buying and reading his Xanth series until he finally croaks.  Xanth is a series I've read since childhood and I refuse to not see the ending of this great work.  He's freaking 90 years old.  It can't be much longer.

Meanwhile, I switched out Milk for Tashigi (from One Piece) in my wonderful characters hall of fame.  Milk has an insufferable attitude despite her good looks.  Tashigi is decent looking but moreover she's a decent person, always trying to do what's right and help those in need.  I also replaced Rin from Yes! Precure 5 with Faldio from Valkyria Chronicles.  Faldio has been in '100 Waifus' before so it isn't a surprise he could reach my wonderful list.  As for Rin there's just nothing praiseworthy about her.  She falls for an endless series of older men she should know better than to try to jailbait trap, only ever causing trouble for herself.  She's afraid of silly things like ghosts.  She's bossy with Nozomi and argumentative with Karen.  She said an unforgivable thing to Urara.  Her hair is too short.  Bead jewelry is low class.  She's Nozomi's best friend so it makes sense for Nozomi to have a daughter named Rin in '100 Waifus,' but going further and honoring her doubly by including her in my wonderful hall of fame is a bridge too far.

I also discovered that Int in Heaven Burns Red doesn't scale, so once you get around 250 of it all extra Int is pointless.  This is unlike Vit, Spirit, Dex and Str which all do scale.  I think Luck scales in some ways but not in others, so again it's not a stat worth pursuing.  Vitality, Spirit, Dexterity and Strength are where it's at.  And normally Dexterity is worth more than Strength because enemies generally have tougher shields than health bars.

I've built six +6 elemental bracelets, the max level a bracelet can be, so all my characters can be as strong as possible in this domain.  Next up I'm going to concentrate on charms.  Specifically Vitality, Spirit, Dexterity and Strength charms, since Int and Luck don't actually do anything after your stats reach a certain point, which my characters have already passed.  Obviously I do have charms for everyone in every stat field, but none of them are at max level yet, so I could still improve in this direction.

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