What's the title of this book?
 

Brief synopsis:
There's a world where everyone has a special ability that they discover in their adolescence. Some can fly, others have super strength, while some even possess telepathy. One person in this world discovers that he does not possess any powers at all. He goes on a journey to perhaps discover his true power, if he has one at all. He meets up with a girl whose power is a curse. One day she is incredibly beautiful but extremely dumb while the next day she is an absolute genius but painful to look at. She goes through this cycle day after day. They journey together, he discovers his true power (which is greater than any of the other powers) and she learns to make the best of her power.

I can't seem to remeber the title of this book. Does anyone know?

was it by piers anthony? sounds like a piers anthony book, but it was with magic talent, and i dont remember the part about the girl and the curse...that sounds like shrek

I looked up Piers Anthony and found a book entitled A Spell for Chameleon . The description of this book sounds like the one but I can almost swear that the main character encounters a girl with a cursed power. I could be wrong but I'll definitely give this book a look over to see. Thanks for the help.

That's probably it. It was definitely one of the Xanth books.

Definitely A Spell for Chameleon. It's on my bookshelf at home.

Hmm. I should read that again. It's been a while.

Seems funny to me. Just looked up on amazon... Does one need to read the other books to understand it?

no, but it helps....he writes on an 8th grade level, but you like the characters, and the books go by quickly. good bed time books. they read a lot like the harry potter books.

Piers Anthony is a hack writer. I have read A Spell for Chameleon, and many other of his books since when I was a teenager. He loves to write multi-volume series- but what happens is that he keeps writing well after the point where he is out of good ideas for that story line.

A Spell for Chameleon, or Split Infinity, or On a Pale Horse are all very good books by themselves. Their sequels are pretty good too. But every book progressively along in each series get a little bit worse.

If you like the book, sure go ahead and read the next book in the series. The moment you find that the book you are reading is boring, stop reading that series! It's not going to get any better!

Hey! Just like Robert Jordan! ;)

I've not read Robert Jordan, but I can assure you, no matter how bad HE is, Piers Anthony is worse.

GREAT first books (Spell for Chameleon is a first book), good second, okay third ... the remainder should be printed at folio size so they are useful for the lining of birdcages and the wrapping of fishes.

(EDIT: Yes, I'm well aware that the plural of "fish" is "fish", but the above construction was funnier.)

Yeah, what is it with these authors who can't seem to write one book, unless they write 5 or 6? I mean, David Eddings for example. 5 books, then another 5-book sequel, then a new 3-book series and a sequel 3-book series. Then 2 prequels to the first series.

Oh, and let's not forget that all 18 of these books involve in some way, a blue stone with mystic religious properties that people are fighting over.

EDDINGS DID PREQUELS TO THE BELGARIAD?!?!?!?!?

oo oo what're they called?

I agree about Anthony. I thought he was doing better because I liked the whole Split Infinity trilogy. Then he brought out a series about their kids. Couldn't get past the first couple of chapters.

hey, what was that decology that L.Ron Hubbard wrote....that was like crack. i wasted half a summer reading those when i was in 11th grade/

ohmigod.

You LIKED Eddings? And L. Ron??

*shakes head sadly*

Belgareth the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress. There's also a couple of sequel series, which you probably knew about.
"Mission: Earth", I believe.

well, as i said, i was in 11th grade. and i think eddings predated that, even.

and shake your head all you want, but you said: not me:)

While I'm dissing your literary choices I should probably fess up to my guilty pleasures ...

The Survivalist Series by Jerry Ahern
They Call me the Mercenary by Alex Kilgore (who turns out to also be Jerry Ahern)

I also read most of the "Ashes" series by William Johnstone, but well, he was no Jerry Ahern, and the books were kinda tedious ...

In an attempt to reclaim some respect ... right now I'm reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson ... and just finished The Assassin by W.E.B. Griffin, oh wait, maybe that one doesn't help much ...

Wolf,
go get "Lamb" by christopher Moore. Very good. lighthearted christian bashing, too, so i know you'll enjoy it.

pulp fiction
 

I've collected several of the Destroyer series and the Horseclans books, but it's more about the hunt through used book stores than the reading.

Are they still (ghost)writing Destroyer? I know the number of books in the series is in the triple digits.

EDIT: I looked it up. The highest I found at Amazon was #134 and ranked a solid 1(one) star in reader reviews.

Hey, I never said they were great literature. ;)

The comic book series, on the other hand, was great.

The early Destroyer books were very clever. I even liked the movie.

I think they started to lose something around the early to mid thirties.

The series went downhill when the original authors stopped writing it.

Not that there weren't some good ghost writers, just that there were some awful ones.

Maybe you want to kill me after this but :
Tolkien only wrote two interesting books : Bilbo the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (even though some parts of it are quite boring), most of the others are highly boring... (but none the less geniously imaginated).
Same for Dune. I read the Dune and started some of the prequels and sequels. Stopped reading after few chapters.

I tried to read the Silmarilion in elementary school, and couldn't do it. In college, I tried again, and loved it. Unfortunately, the least interesting stuff is at the beginning.

His children's stories are very good, too - Mr Bliss and the Father Christmas Letters were staples of my childhood, and when Roverrandom came out recently, it was very fun to read. Farmer Giles of Ham is funny. I made an abortive attempt to make a Zork-like adventue game out of it when in junior high school.

Now, the massive series of organized notes that his son is putting out is for extreme fans only. I've only read one of those.


As for Dune, I read the first two and gave up on the third in elementary school, and have never gone back to see how I feel about them now.

It was other people that wrote prequels to Dune, and while I did take out House:Harkonen and House:Atredies from the library, I never read them!
What are they like?

I have read every book in the Dune series written by Frank himself.
While the first one was far and away the best, the rest were at least interesting reading for a die-hard fan.


I read Frank Herbert's Destination:Void and don't know why I didn't pass out or give up. It was like reading a two hundred+ page mathematical proof in prose with characters and a sci-fi setting thrown in for no reason. I still don't understand what he wrote, but I was aware that he was deriving theorems from basic facts or axioms and building up to a giant conclusion, but it made no sense to me whatsoever.

After that, I find myself a bit afraid to read the other non-Dune Herbert books.

I got curious and poked around some more. It seems the original Destroyer authors are still active.

I ordered a shirt and a new book of quotes and such from "www.warrenmurphy.com".

I'm not going to order any of the actual books from the series online, though. I prefer to hunt through the stacks in used book stores.

Maze
This is part of a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue^h^h^h^h goblin.
you feel a ring on the floor.

> get ring

wow. flashback...
i'm 13 and my dad brings home the first portable computer. must have been 40-50 lbs, with a fold down keyboard. black screen, green letters. it took 5" floppys.

we played a maze game like that ( hall of the mountain king??) for hours on the weekends when we stayed at his place. "you come to the top of a dark stariway that leads into a cave....." somehow this was better than today's far superior games.....like reading a book instead of watching a movie....the imagery is all in your head......

thanks for the flashback.

:)

mmmm... Aztec

You're welcome!

I used to love those text adventure games, but I haven't been able to play one in years. These days every time I try to play one, I get impatient the first moment I get stuck with a puzzle.


Here is a link to details about the Collosal Caves Adventure, the granddaddy of all text games...
http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/

and here is a link to a site you can telnet to to play infocom games as well as a few others like collosal caves all online!

http://infocom.elsewhere.org/

Zork I was awesome! I even remember reading a chose your own adventure book that was based on Zork!


Do you know what XYZZY is?

A hollow voice says, "Fool."

Very important ... ONLY read Dune. I never felt the sequels were worth the amount of time I spent reading them, and it's rare that I would consider time reading as time wasted.

Nothing happens.