When I was a kid I loved reading Piers Anthony's Xanth novels. I was a young tyke when I read his initial Xanth entry, A SPELL FOR CHAMELEON, when it was first published. I then read the next eleven installments as they came out, culminating with MAN FROM MUNDANIA. These twelve Xanth novels are the best this series has to offer, and I firmly believe the books that followed them lack a little something. Offhand, I say, part of the reason the earlier books are better is because they seemed to be a bit more serious minded, even with all the puns, whereas the later books just seemed to wallow in ever sillier and unfunny puns. Whatever, maybe I'm old-schooled. I prefer the classic Xanth books. I just re-read the first three books and MAN FROM MUNDANIA a few days ago and I must say that they again instilled in me the same kind of enchantment I felt when I read them all those years ago. In contrasting these excellent entries with the later, more drab Xanth offerings, well, it's really not even a contest.

My favorite Xanth books are A SPELL FOR CHAMELEON, THE SOURCE OF MAGIC, CREWEL LYE, and MAN FROM MUNDANIA. I like MAN FROM MUNDANIA mostly because, for the first time, Piers chose to have a character from our side of the fence (Earth, or Mundania - as Xanth folks call it) become the main protagonist. Grey Murphy is a normal 18 year old guy drudging thru city college and toiling thru a tepid course in Freshman English. Grey is as average as you can get. His driver's license indicates his hair as "hair-colored" and his eyes as "neutral." The weirdness begins for him when his computer seems to gain sentience and begins to affect Grey's personal life. It offers to set him up with odd young women with dubious names such as Agenda, Euphoria, and Salmonella. The computer eventually arranges a meeting between Grey and a girl named Ivy. Grey is intrigued with Ivy, who is pretty, quaint, and charming, despite her assertions that she hails from a fantasyland called Xanth and is a princess. According to her, Ivy had used the Heaven Cent, a fantastic penny device which sends the user to where he or she is needed the most. But now, Ivy wants to go home and Grey agrees to help her.

This begins Grey Murphy's magical adventures in Xanth. Grey, as skeptical and logical-minded as they come, takes a long while to believe in Xanth's magical reality as he insists on finding logical, scientific explanations for every wondrous sight he beholds, much to Ivy's frustration. The story goes on to chronicle Grey's eventual belief in magic and Grey's coming into his own, as he strives to defeat the nefarious Com-Pewter and woo the Princess Ivy, despite the disapproval of her regal parents (you see, only someone on a Magician level can marry Xanth royalty and Grey, of course, doesn't have any magic talent).

Although this is a fine stand-alone novel in its own right, Piers Anthony, as usual, throws in waves of characters from his prior Xanth novels (Stanley Steamer, Grundy Golem and Rapunzel, King Dor and Queen Irene, etc). It also somewhat continues the story of Prince Dolph and his two fiancees, Nada and Electra (which finally gets resolved in the next book ISLE OF VIEW). A sequence I enjoyed was Grey and Ivy's trip to Mount Parnassus and the Muse of History, wherein we get to sneak a peek at future Xanth book titles. MAN FROM MUNDANIA is loosely considered to be the third in a trilogy, the previous two being VALE OF THE VOLE and HEAVEN CENT. Again, the ridiculous fantasy elements and groan-inducing puns (several contributed by fans) abound and benefit the tale. The storyline seems to offer a more mature content, delving more into the Adult Conspiracy, no doubt brought about by Grey's earthbound sensibilities. The Magician of Information is still missing (this plotline has gone on for several books now), but there is somewhat of a resolution offered here. I particularly admire the neat way Grey's dilemma is resolved (involving a reluctant promise he had made to the evil Com-Pewter).

Years ago, after MAN FROM MUNDANIA, I continued to read the following Xanth installments, but found that these had lost the luster. After YON ILL WIND, I finally gave up. But I very strongly recommend MAN FROM MUNDANIA and the eleven Xanth books before it. After that, you're on your own.

I have to hand one thing to Piers Anthony: He managed to take a single plot element, the disappearance of Good Magician Humphrey, and make it last for five novels, barely advancing the search for the Good Magician in each book.

After her brother Dolph looked for the Good Magician Humphrey in the previous book and came back with two fiancees, Princess Ivy decides its her turn to go look for the Answer-providing Magician. After stealing back a magical mirror from a magical Com-Pewter, she invokes the Heaven Cent and ....

Enter Grey Murphy, stage left. Residing in magicless Mundania, he has managed to obtain a computer program that procures girlfriends for him. And its latest procurement? No prize if you guess Ivy. Following the by-now standard Xanth formula, they undertake a journey (back to Xanth) and fall in love along the way.

But it's a good journey. Piers Anthony made two very, very good decisions with this novel. First, he abandoned the juvenile tone that infested earlier and later entries in the Xanth series. Second, after umpty-ump Xanth novels made tangle trees, ladies-slipper bushes, and other magical marvels seem mundane, Anthony chose to approach much of novel through an outsider -- Grey Murphy.

Even as he confronts wonder after wonder, Grey Murphy refuses to believe in magic. A sailing mountain? Special effects. Invisible giant spouting a river of blood? Food coloring. A half-human, half-equine centaur? A robot. A hate spring? Ordinary water, backed by a strong superstition that it will make people hate each other.

Despite his disbelief in magic, Grey Murphy is nonetheless the typical Anthony protagonist, with a code of ethics that uniformly matches every other protagonist we've seen out there. Not that I mind ethical characters, mind you; it just gets tiresome when, after a dozen books, all the good guys display identical codes of ethics. Kind of ruins diversity of characters.

The plot continues, with Grey having to meet a certain challenge to successfully assert a claim to Ivy's hand in marriage, journey all over Mount Parnassus, and overcome a rather nasty oath that's been forced on him ... but things might just turn out well for this happy couple, right? Right??

If you would like to inflict the remainder of this series on yourself, this book is a very good jumping-on point. Grey Murphy's unfamiliarity with the land of magic makes him a good proxy for an unfamiliar reader, but the book's other flaws (uniform characters, linear plotting) keep it from a perfect rating.