I took it home, read it in a weekend. Centaurs! Dragons! Titillating sexual references, action, jokes and people being transformed into basilisks and sphinxes. I was hooked.

I then consumed "The Source of Magic" (Xanth 2), "Castle Roogna" (X3), "Centaur Aisle" (X4), "Ogre, Ogre" (X5), "Night Mare" (X6), "Golem in the Gears" (X7) and "Crewel Lye" (X8) in swift succession, only stopping when I got a boyfriend who read philosophy and made me feel embarrassed about my reading habits. Now Anthony's latest, "The Dastard" (X24), is out in hardcover, and it's been years since I immersed myself in the pleasure of reading series fantasy. (Well, that's not exactly accurate. Like everyone else, I read the Harry Potter books, and their popularity has led me both to return to Xanth and to contemplate just what makes this genre so satisfying. Also, Anthony is devilish fun, and nobody is paying him any critical attention, even though a large number of Xanth books have hit the New York Times bestseller list.)

"A Spell for Chameleon" is the story of Bink, a young man who is about to be exiled from the magical land of Xanth because he has no talent -- all humans must demonstrate magic ability by the age of 25. In hope of avoiding deportment, he travels through the perilous wilderness (populated by harpies, dragons and a wide variety of dangerous magical plants) to ask Humphrey, the Magician of Information, whether or not he has any undiscovered ability. Humphrey discerns that Bink does indeed, but the magic remains somehow unidentifiable, so Bink is wrongly exiled to dreary Mundania (where the rest of us live). There, he encounters Evil Magician Trent, banished from Xanth for trying to overthrow the Storm King.

Trent is a transformer. He can change any living thing into any other living thing. And though his talent has been worthless all his many years in Mundania, and though there is an enormous deadly shield preventing his return, he is nonetheless plotting the conquest of his native country. He imprisons Bink and a fellow exile -- a fiendishly smart and painfully ugly woman named Fanchon -- and forces them to help him eliminate the shield; all three return to Xanth (it's a long story), huge and complex adventures ensue, Bink prevails through what appears to be a series of miraculous coincidences, and eventually Trent discovers our hero's talent: Bink cannot be hurt by magic in any way. Fanchon reveals that she is a chameleon -- stupid and gorgeous at the start of the month, ugly and smart at the end of it (she left Xanth to escape the constant transformation) -- and she and Bink fall in love and get married (he likes variety). Trent turns out not to be so evil after all; he takes over from the aging, incompetent Storm King, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"