Key to Havoc

ChroMagic #1

by Piers Anthony

1,000 years ago Earth sent out a ship that colonized the planet Charm. But the population of Charm is now far removed from their ancient ancestors. Technology has been lost over the years but the people have something better—Magic!

Charm is a world covered by volcanoes, each erupting a different color of magic. Everything within a particular Chroma becomes that color. Plants, animals, insects, and even humans all become one color and can perform that color of magic. Traveling is dangerous because a person leaving their native Chroma home can no longer perform their color magic.

Havoc is a barbarian living in a nonChroma village, where no one has magic. As a boy, he rescued a dragon that rewarded him with special magic; to sense pending danger.

His gift becomes more valuable than he can imagine as he is suddenly drafted and forced to become the new king of the planet. He must perform his duties or be executed for treason.

To make matters worse, the assassin who killed the former king is now after Havoc!

Book 1 of the ChroMagic series

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Ebooks, Science Fiction, Epic Fantasy

340 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2003

About the author

Though he spent the first four years of his life in England, Piers never returned to live in his country of birth after moving to Spain and immigrated to America at age six. After graduating with a B.A. from Goddard College, he married one of his fellow students and and spent fifteen years in an assortment of professions before he began writing fiction full-time.

Piers is a self-proclaimed environmentalist and lives on a tree farm in Florida with his wife. They have two grown daughters.

Reviews

[Samuel Proulx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just when I thought Piers Anthony had forever sunk into a relme of countless unoriginal (if still amusing) xanth novels at publisher behest, I came across this small print offering. In fact, I own the ebook edition, though ebooks don't seem to yet be listed on librarything (why no fictionpress search option?). For the price, this long volume, first in a series of three, is well worth purchasing. Following the adventures of a country boy forced into becoming king of a planet, It continues in Mr. Anthony's unique style of average seeming characters having grand adventures of epoch proportion. The key addition to the formula is an absolutely staggering amount of sex. While many don't find Piers Anthony's cartoonish style of sexy softcore pornography appealing, I find his sexual views refreshingly different from run of the mill lay and slay fantasy sex. If you're comfortable with Anthony's sex in his other novels (Firefly, Refugee, and Cluster come to mind), you'll enjoy this less popular offering; you might even come to feel, as I do, that this represents some of his best work. However, if you find Anthony style sex unappealing, give this book (and probably the entire series) a pass.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a fun little adventure aimed at a younger audience as perhaps many of his books are.


As to those claimed it just "smut" I say stop being prudes especially since there is nothing really in big detail like much of the urban fantasy book often have and is no where as bad as the bio of a space tyrant series.

Don't miss out on a nice little series due to some exaggerated comment left by others.

[Steven King · Rating 2 out of 5]

Billed as a sci-fi/fantasy novel, but actually a smut novel.

Good plot, interesting characters, and good writing. But, the sexual content was totally unnecessary and promotes an idealized adolescent world view.

I will not be continuing the series.

[Hazel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warning: book contains, pedophilia, rape, bestiality, torture, underage sex, alcohol use, negative views of disability, and of course stereotypical sex and gender roles.

I hate to admit I enjoyed this book because honestly Piers Anthony is so bad at putting his horny old guy fantasies into his books.

The world is fantastic and fun and intriguing and the story and plot works so nicely. I even appreciate to a degree the acknowledgment that children have an interest and curiosity about sex.

But there's more underage sex in this book than in any of his other books I've read. And that's saying a lot honestly.

The society of this world is typical guy fantasy stuff. Women are required to have so many living children and be married at 18. Women characters have to be seductive, that is their primary power.

I enjoyed the book but honestly it's so problematic and awful. You can tell that piers really loved this book. It's well written it's interesting and he filled it up with as much sex as he could because that's the kind of guy he is.

Despite the world and characters being evocative I can't recommend the book. It's just so terrible and problematic

[Russell Hosaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alternate to Xanth

For those of you who are Xanth Fans. I recommend this series by Piers. An R rated series with magic, beautiful women and handsome men. There is not any adult conspiracy censors in this 5 novel series.

[Mars · Rating 1 out of 5]

Piers Anthony's writings were *awesome* when I was 12, but having grown up a bit and read some more serious literature, it just doesn't stack up.

Gratuitous sex, ridiculous story, flat characters, and an apparent inability to let go of the world of Xanth (a number of things still function in a literal and punny way).


Spoilers follow.

1. Magic cannot predict the future, as was mentioned in passing by one of the characters. And yet, we have a ridiculous deus ex ma dragon seed that can warn of danger *before it happens*.

2. The dragon seeds again. Super-limited range, yet it can identify when someone tells a lie. *Any* lie. Including things of arbitrary complexity and distance. As a result of which:
* It should be buzzing non-stop, since anything anyone ever says is not the Absolute Truth by definition.
* It apparently can be used to answer *any* question (as, in fact, it is used at one point). Why go to investigate the Temple, or do much of anything else? Just spout your theories at the seed until it stops buzzing! 20 questions will take way less time than all the travel, and be much less risky.

3. The telepathic disease. The problem makes no sense. The cure makes even less sense (the block works by producing the rough equivalent of white noise - to someone who is already overwhelmed with too much data, someone else doing it should just make your problem worse, and you doing it should have no effect whatsoever.)
And, after getting infected, Havoc goes on a bardic romp, which should have infected a goodly proportion of the populace he interacted with.

4. Havoc and Gale are both changelings, which somehow magically makes them twins? How does this logic work?

5. The four-children rule makes a little bit of sense, if you want to rapidly repopulate a planet. The rest of the social arrangement doesn't.
If you have to have the maximum genetic variety, you get rid of the institution of marriage entirely - have communal relationships, raise all children as a group, and any woman can have any man and vice versa if both are amenable and no close ties between them exist, with some additional rules in place to help the unattractives toss their genes into the pool. The "3 of your own, + a mandatory fourth by someone else before you can do anything else" is just silly - and it applies to men as well as women, although with the amount of sex everyone is having establishing paternity that way is next to impossible.
Exiling anyone who refuses to marry, or who wants to wait for their love interest to grow up, is just plain idiotic.

6. A large percentage of the planet's human population are mind readers (all the blues, and many of the others to a lesser degree). All the wildlife are mind readers. Protecting your mind from being read should be the *first* thing they teach you - and the ability should be widely known.

7. The apparent lack of intermarriage between different-colored people is silly and counter-productive given all the other reproductive rules.

8. The white chroma? Seriously? Trains go faster when they get closer to the cone, because somehow being more sciency makes that happen? How the heck did the original colonists manage to land in the first place, if the basic laws of physics suddenly no longer apply?


And the list just keeps growing and growing. I have industrial-strength disbelief suspenders, but you need anti-gravity to be able to deal with this load.

[Kami Bee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Piers Anthony is, I think, a great writer with a lot of brilliant ideas, but ruins great concepts with unnecessary and gross sex to the point where sometimes I'm wondering if he's having his readers on. This book/series is one of those ruined concepts.

I'd like to believe I'm not prudish. I'm not put off by explicit details of sex in a story if they feel like they should be there. I was put off because this book, which would have stood on its own perfectly well and a lot better without the sexual content, used sex to humiliate and undermine the beliefs and desires of the main characters, without any realistic treatment of how this has impacted on them. Havoc and Gale are determined to stay sexually true to one another - eventually their views on this degrade to the point where they will have sexual relations with anyone at the drop of a hat. I could believe this happening in the context of the world they were dragged into, and it would have been fascinating if it were explored sincerely, but as far as I can see it's just an excuse to show loads of very unappealing sex.

To be fair at the time of writing this I have not read beyond the second in the series and have no idea if my issues were ever addressed, but my hopes for this are low and I have no motivation to hurry to read further. If I wanted to read bad erotica clumsily stuffed into a story it doesn't fit in I could find any amount of that freely online.

[Brandon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love the concept behind the series. Unfortunately, Piers Anthony's writing style doesn't change. You might as well be taking pages from Incarnations, Xanth, Firefly and probably a few more books and mashing them up and changing some names. It's all the same plot devices. A dragon seed instead of sning for truth telling, demons, bottoms and bosoms all over the place, ugly girls with attractive personalities, the depressed girl who finds a good man, attractive girls with ugly personalities, a bit of torture of women, and very few strong female characters. Or, should I say, weak male characters with a group of females to guide them. I couldn't even make it through the book, to be honest.

Don't get me wrong. I used to love Piers Anthony's writing. I devoured Battle Circle, Incarnations, Apprentice Adept, Mode and the rest when I was younger. But having read as many books as I have, from Wheel of Time to Isaac Asimov to Tom Clancy, the same tired cliches and overused plot devices just don't do it for me any more.

[Sean Randall · Rating 4 out of 5]

More overtly sexual than some of Anthony's works, although not of course all of them, this was nonetheless enjoyably typical. I can't put my finger on what he does to the dimensionality of his characters but I'm quite a fan, even if it's not to many tastes.

[Brian King · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely a different Science Fiction/Fantasy story than most anything else. Just be prepared for a lot of sex in it. Interesting read.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much like the Xanth series, but with the opposite of the Adult Conspiracy sex restrictions.