Do any of you read Xanth series?

[mdrew93]

I like Xanth books by Piers Anthony and ADOM about equally. I was just wondering if any of you out there had ever read any of the Xanth series and if you liked them or not. There are like 30 books out in the series so far and more on the way! the amazing thing is that it never gets old. If you havent read any of them you should pick up one at the library.

The first book is A Spell for Chameleon.

[gut]

The first xanth book that I read, was 'castle roogna'. I was immediately hooked,
and wound up reading it more than ten times. The local library only had that
one : ) Within a few years, I collected about 15 of them, and eventually read nearly
all of them. I think I stopped somewhere around 'zombie lover'. I may pick them up
again sometime, but it's harder to enjoy them the same way I used to, when I was
a bit younger : )

There is a computer game 'companions of xanth', it's (I think it's called) an 'if' game,
so it's really only fun to play once. You can't find it in stores, as they no longer sell
it, but you can find it on the net if you search enough. If your interested in it, and
can't find it, I'll post it to a filehosting site for you.

If you haven't read Robert Asprin's 'myth adventure' series, I highly recommend it.
The first of the series 'another fine myth' is one of my all time favorite books. Also
check out Wies and Hickman's 'death gate cycle'.

[mdrew93]

cool! i own about 19 of the xanth books and am eventually going to get all of them. Castle roogna is the one i am currently re-reading. It is one of the best! i will check out the series you recomended the next timne i go to the library. i have played and beat companions of xanth. i got it from www.xanthians.com. It is like a xanth fan site. it is barely active and hasnt been updated since 2006, but the forum still works. i am almost the only one who uses it though.

[gut]

The artist that painted the cover art for the 'xanth' series, is largely responsible
for my interest in art. Darrel K. Sweet is really a modern day master in my opinion.
In particular, his painting for the 'crewel lye' book made me want to make my own
worlds the same as he did : ) I am no where near his talent level, although I might
be a lot closer if I would stop playing ADOM so much : ) There is only one thing
about his 'xanth' covers that bothers me. He sometimes changes a bit too much
about the appearance of the characters. For instance, for the book 'dragon on
a pedastal', he paints princess Ivy as a blonde. His dragons are awsome though,
and he did a great job on the gap dragon in that painting. That was just how I
had always pictured him in my mind : ) His paintings for the tolkien books (and
calandar) are great also.

[mdrew93]

i love the cover art on all the books!!! i was just wondering who did them! i think the cover of crewel lye is amazing! if you could somehow e-mail me some of your artwork i would love to see it! send me a private message and i will reply with my email address if you can email it to me!:)

[reich]

I only played Companions of Xanth from Legend Ent - one of my favourite classic adventure games developer (Death Gate is also fantastic and also based on a fantasy book).

[gut]

The only digital pictures that I have of my work, are rather
badly scanned, and dated to boot. I painted most of these
when I was about 18, and most were not even completed yet.
Still, they bring back memories, and you can see the impact
that fantasy illistrators had on me. Here I have posted
a few samples, for any that are interested in what images are
bursting to get out of my warped mind : )

http://myfreefilehosting.com/f/d6ef57f740_0.47MB

Of all fantasy illistrators, I have to say that Boris Vallejo
is my favorite. He uses the commercial art technique of tracing
the figures in his paintings (for speed reasons) though, and I
don't like that. I prefering freehand myself, but as far as
actual painting technique is concerned, he has only one rival,
his wife Julie Bell : ). I have spent nearly as many hours
studying Boris's work, as I have playing ADOM, and that's saying
something : )

Darrel K Sweet, Bob Eggleton, Ken Kelly, Kieth Parkinson, and
Jeff Easly are also on my favorites list. With Jeff Easly having
painted my all time favorite dragon painting, for his cover of
the 'Legend of Huma' book, by Richard K. Knaak. This is the
kind of painting, I want to create... one day.

http://myfreefilehosting.com/f/39bd3f2071_0.14MB

[mdrew93]

WOW!!! You are a really good artist and have great potential! All of them have awsome attention to detail! You should keep drawing! I have tried over and over again to draw like that and always failed miserably. :( Your work is great! i loved the candle man! and the girl was excellent! The wolf and the dragon had great detail and the Sea creature thing is amazing! it's just like being in xanth! i wish i could draw like that. If i had more money i would offer to buy some of you work. it is excellent!

The one by the other guy is really cool! i bet if you keep working at it you could get that good! you are good already and with some practice you could be rich!:)

[Tnx]

Never heard of this series, I'll be sure to check it out. I've been reading the Dragonlance series ever since I found one of the books at the library, i have about 20 books from the dragonlance universe, they're great and I eventually want to own them all (I think its upwards of 100+ books, most of them from other authors that write their own little stories using the lore and such from the main books). If you guys are interested, you should go on amazon and search up "dragonlance chronicles annotated", its the compilation of 3 of the first books (1300 pages long!). It's a cheap alternative if you buy used compared to buying the 3 first books seperately. Oh and gut, great drawings, its a change from seeing art that's bogged down with tons of detail and stuff.

[mdrew93]

next time i am at the library i will be sure to check out some dragonlace books.:)

[Xanthine]

No, don't do it!

Forgotten Realms is better omg fanboyness. (Not really, you should actually read both series; they're an important part of your Fantasy Geek education.)

My first fantasy novel ever was Isle of View when I was ten. I found it in my dad's car one day and was hooked forever. I don't remember when I stopped reading them in terms of book chronology, but the last one I remember clearly at all was, iirc, three books after the one with the family of Mundanes and the storm and such. I'm bad at book titles. >_>;;

[gut]

I just remembered that I haven't posted a link to 'speak' in this
forum yet. I better go ahead and do that : )

http://www.shadisoft.com/download/speak.shtml

The 'speak' program allows you to just copy the text from a book
(to the clipboard), and it will read it to you. It takes a little
getting used to, but after a while, it'll probably sound better
to you than an audio book. Nothing like playing ADOM, or painting,
while my computer reads a book to me. How lazy can I get? : )

[mdrew93]

i have spekonia. you can get it on download.com if you want. just type in spekonia and find the right one. isle of view was good. i am trying to read man from mundania but i havent read the one before that so i have to piece together whats going on. i am going to buy heaven cent as soon as i can. That is the one i need now. i have 19 out of 32 books!

[Tnx]

I tried spekonia and it had the computer sounding voice which was real weird, did a bit of research and found this site http://www.yakitome.com, you gotta register but most people are saying that its the best free natural sounding reader, its reading an e book to me right now and it sounds great. (heh i sound like an advertisement)

[gut]

I tried the yakitome site, and unless I am missing something, it's only web
based text conversion. The site was a bit cluttered, so maybe I just
overlooked something?

[Tnx]

Yeah, from what I read on the forum post that referred me to yakitome, the person said that I would be able to download it to MP3 format, it doesn't give the option though so now I'm still trying to find a free text to voice program with a nice sounding voice. These voices (mike, sarah, etc) looks like they're licensed to the big telecom companies so I'm not sure if I'll be able to find a nice free one. Tell me if you find a good one though.

[moppit]

I have read some of 'em... Picked up a spell for chameleon when I was about 12 flying on some trip w/my mom.. Actually, ran into nikki six of motley crue at a bookstore on a layover in nashville tennessee... He signed my inside front cover.. Jim, Evil evil evil, Mr. Nikki Sick Six... All I could think was.. Man this dude is creepy... But I loved the books especially then.. The word play was always clever.. And I did enjoy the Xanth series, of which I've read maybe 5 or 6, But I like better the Incarnations of Immortality series (about the archetypes of death, the fates, god, satan, war, and time) but IMHO the best Piers Anthony book was a trilogy called Battlecircle or something along those lines... That was a rad story...

[gut]

> Tell me if you find a good one though.

You don't like the shadisoft 'speak' program's voice? I suppose it does
sound a bit robotic, but I got used to it very quickly, and now prefer
it to audio book voices.

[mdrew93]

I don't think IMOH was half as good as xanth. have you read split infinity? i probably will. My dad had three old xanth books and i found them and now i buy the books from ebay and amazon and abebooks.com. Now there is a cool sight. www.abebooks.com has almost every book and a bunch of diffrent sellers who are selling it. really cool.
anyway, my dad also has i think three bio of a space tyrant books. i never read those yet.

[gut]

I read one of the kelven series. Dragon's gold, I think, and it was OK.

[mdrew93]

i've been meaning to try them.

[Tnx]

Nah gut, the voices that comes with the shareware version of that sounds too creepy lol