A story about an Ogre
Well, I have just discovered that there are 35 Xanth books, but I believe that I only read twelve of them. Here I am up to number 5, so I guess that means that I have another 7 to go to finish my brief comments on the Xanth series, or at least as many as I have read. I guess they must have been popular since Anthony did churn out 35 of them, but then again this does fall into the category of pulp and are mass market paperbacks. I suspect that all he needs to do is come up with a basic plot, and then fill in all the holes.
As mentioned elsewhere, it does not cost all that much to write and produce a book. Basically you really only have to pay a single person to write the book full time, and even then it is not a salaried position, but a share of the profits. Anthony has churned out quite a number of books though, not just Xanth, but I will be speaking about these series elsewhere.
This book is about Smash the Ogre who goes on a quest to find himself. While on this quest he meets up with numerous women who follow him around. It seems as if Smash has his own little harem, though remember that Anthony does target the Xanth novels at the teenage market, so sex does not appear in these books (though it does in his other novels). The problem I found with Anthony is that to me he is an author of teenage novels, so when I moved to his more adult novels, it just did not seem the same (at least Bio of a Space Tyrant, which turned out to be very lame).
I should mention a bit about Smash. The friend of mine who originally introduced me to the Xanth novels had a thing for Smash. He even created a roleplaying character modelled around the ogre. Okay, I also liked the stupid warrior type, though I do tend to prefer my warriors to be a little eccentric, or at least skilled in other areas. In this book Smash actually becomes smart, and this disturbs him to no end as ogres are not meant to be smart. Anyway, I guess one of the ideas in this book is about accepting who we are rather than desiring to be something that we are not.
