History Literature / Xanth

* AndIMustScream: Anyone who got turned into a tree or plant by Trent.

* AllMythsAreTrue: Lots of mythology references, including some silly ones -- for example, ''Summoning the Stork'', which is literally how babies are made in Xanth: after a ''certain ritual'', the Storks fly in a baby to the new parents.

* AuthorFilibuster: A variant -- Piers Anthony includes a chapter's long Author's Note after the end of every novel he writes, in which he talks about whatever was on his mind while he was writing the novel. If he doesn't people accuse him of [[AuthorExistenceFailure being dead]].

* WatchingTheReflectionUndress: In ''Demons Don't Dream'', Nada Naga insists to Dug that he must not try to see her naked. When she changes in one scene, he attempts to sneak a peek at her anyway with his belt buckle, and the "computer game" that he's playing to connect him to the world of Xanth ends up booting him out because of it.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Well, the definition of "evil" is stretched a bit for Trent, but he notes that even during his rebellion, he would never intentionally transform someone in a way that would kill them. (e.g. turning them into fish while they are still on land.)

** A number of the early books sported half to fully naked women on the cover, so the actual artwork had its own issues.

* AintNoRule: Xanth's laws appeared to deny the throne to women because the King must be a Magician. Eventually someone realized that a Sorceress is just a female Magician, and the rules of succession were changed to allow women to [[SheIsTheKing hold the title of King]].

The first book, ''A Spell for Chameleon'', was written in 1977, and the series continues to this day (with #41 releasing in 2017 and more just waiting for publication), recently entering its 2nd trilogy. In typical Creator/PiersAnthony fashion, he declared the first trilogy over after the 27th book (3 Cubed, or 3^3, is 27) ''[[PunBasedTitle Cube Route]]''. Xanth has even inspired a "fan book", a novel-length work of collaborative fiction that Piers Anthony has mentioned positively in his [[http://hipiers.com/newsletter.html official newsletter.]

What do you get when you take a rather witty (and [[LongRunningBookSeries long-running]]) American author, create a FictionalCounterpart of the ''entire state of Florida'', give everyone in it magical powers (or "[[YouKeepUsingThatWord talents]]") to make a ''[[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Magic Kingdom]]'', if you will (...geddit?), fill it with various deconstructive parodies of fantasy tropes and top it all off with literally hundreds of [[AscendedFanon reader-submitted puns]]?

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: In ''Castle Roogna'', a ring claims to be magical, a wishing ring. When Dor makes a wish on it, it answers, "I'm working on it." Every wish made on it comes true through outside factors — except that every wish made on it does come true, and it never claimed that it could pull off instantaneous wish granting.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Piers has long held that kids don't talk to their folks about sex to a full extent. This (like so much else in Xanth) has a parodic complement in the form of the Adult Conspiracy.

* HealingFactor: Jordan the Barbarian has regeneration as his magical talent, allowing him to recover from anything (anything) up to and including death... so long as his body parts are fairly close to each other.However, after being reunited with himself at the end of a 400-year period of being sliced up and scattered, he did need a lot of food to fully recover.

The first book, ''A Spell for Chameleon'', was written in 1977, and the series continues to this day (with #41 releasing in 2017 and more just waiting for publication), recently entering its 2nd trilogy. In typical Creator/PiersAnthony fashion, he declared the first trilogy over after the 27th book (3 Cubed, or 3^3, is 27) ''[[PunBasedTitle Cube Route]]''. Xanth has even inspired a "fan book", a novel-length work of collaborative fiction that Piers Anthony has mentioned positively in his official newsletter.

* HealingFactor: Jordan the Barbarian has regeneration as his magical talent, allowing him to recover from anything (anything) up to and including death... so long as his body parts are fairly close to each other. However, after being reunited with himself at the end of a 400-year period of being sliced up and scattered, he did need a lot of food to fully recover.

* AnimalVehicleHybrid: There's an car/''harpy'' hybrid

* ColorMotif: Irene, having a plant based talent, has green as her main color. Her hair is green (specifically black with magically made green tints). Her clothes are green (even her panties, seen when her skirt once flares up), and when the centaurs give her a fur garments it's hinted to be green (as it's the natural color for fur trees).

** Averted with Dolph- while his talent includes the ability to become a more attractive version of himself (or anything else he can think of), that doesn't help the fact that he's filed under {{Adorkable}} on a good day.

[[caption-width-right:350:The series' novels so far.]]

* ContractualImmortality: Lampshaded InUniverse. Being a Main Character of a Xanth novel (see LiteraryAgentHypothesis below) ensures that one will eventually get a happy ending, because that's how magic works.

* HappilyEverAfter: Lampshaded. Being a Main Character of a Xanth novel (see LiteraryAgentHypothesis below) ensures that one will eventually get a happy ending, because that's how magic works.

* LiteraryAgentHypothesis: The Xanth novels are written by one of the Muses of Greek myth, and a certain writer has been sneaking copies of them to Mundania.

The ''Xanth'' series by Creator/PiersAnthony takes place in a small Florida-shaped realm of a dimension other than Earth. In Xanth, magic is real, with its own physical laws, often based on reader-submitted (and credited) puns. Billions, and billions of puns. For example -- Pineapples are explosive (aka [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk_2_grenade pineapple fragmentation grenade]]). Cherries (Cherry bombs) are smaller, but still dangerous. Tulips (two lips) will kiss you if you get too close. [[{{Spoonerism}} Boot Rear]] is a fizzy soda that, when drunk, causes you to feel a swift kick to your bottom. And beware the Catastrophe -- a plaque with the back half of a cat stuck into it (a [[IncrediblyLamePun Cat-ass-trophy]]).

** The "immune to magical harm" talent hides itself as well, so that people don't wise up and try to hurt him by mundane means either. Not there ''are'' very many entirely mundane means available; Xanth is so thoroughly infused with magic that even the simplest objects are probably at least a little bit magical. The talent also stops ''indirect'' magical harm in its protections, so something like magically hiding the edge of a cliff from him and trying to get him to fall off wouldn't work either. It's even theorized in-universe that when the [[AGodAmI omnipotent demon]] that's the source of all magic in Xanth left, shutting all the magic down, the talent made him come back very shortly afterward, as removing magic and leaving nothing but nonmagical danger could be considered indirect magical harm. That's right, it's so powerful that it can even affect ''[[BeyondTheImpossible its own omnipotent source]]''.

* SuperpowerfulGenetics: Magician-level parents led to children with Magician caliber powers. Due to a blessing, Bink's descendants will develop Magician-level powers needed to be king.