A Geek tries to create a woman

Man from Mundania - Piers Anthony

Well, I guess I am getting near to the end of my journey through the Xanth novels. This one is based around a computer geek who writes a program to attempt to find himself a girlfriend. The program goes through the letters of the alphabet, summoning women, until princess Ivy arrives from Xanth, disorientated and confused. However, the geek does not believe in magic, and despite travelling to Xanth and seeing all of the wonders, remains sceptical. It turns out, though, that he does have a magical gift, and that is the ability to nullify magic. Because of this talent Ivy can marry him, since she is only allowed to marry somebody who has a magician grade talent, which is what the geek has. It turns out that he is not a mundane though, but the child of two exiled magicians from an earlier book.

 

 

I probably should say a few more things about this book than the paragraph that I have already written, but then you can probably tell by the rating that I gave it I wasn't all that impressed. Honestly, I probably liked it when I was younger, but then I pretty much read all of the Xanth (and other Anthony) books that I could get my hands on – and a friend of mine was a huge fan as well. However, I must say that the whole concept is a little lame. Still, I probably related to the main character since at the time I was one of those computer geeks that wished they could create themselves a girlfriend (wasn't there a movie about that).

 

Still, the whole idea about creating a girlfriend is rather silly in my books. Okay, you do have the Greek story of Pygmalion (which I suspect this book is loosely base upon, where Pygmalion was so disenchanted with the woman around him that he created his own), but that doesn't necessarily mean that 'creating a girlfriend' is all that great. In my mind she would be boring. The thing that I love about humans is that you never know what you are going to get, and the great thing about relationships is that you are constantly learning something new about a person. Also, one of the biggest challenges is learning to live with a human with aspects that you really don't like. If you don't like that then you might as well go and marry a robot (which some computer geeks are actually trying to do now) – just make sure it doesn't turn out to be a terminator.

 

Female Terminator

 

Source: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/253550661