The Secret of Spring

✍ Scribed by Piers Anthony; Jo Anne Taeusch

• Publisher: Tor Fantasy
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 148 KB
• Edition: 1st ed
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

His portraits of aliens and their societies is one of his great strengths as a science fiction writer. 20th Century Science Fiction Writers

A romantic tale of wizardry and botany!

Hes A Sentient Plant.
Herb Moss is a nice young man. Hes a Vegan: a member of a genetically engineered species, part human and part plant, living on the planet New World.

Its a good life, really; Herbs engaged to be married to his childhood sweetheart, Lily, has a job with his fathers firm, and can look forward to a solid if unexciting future. And as everyone keeps telling him, its time to put down roots. If he happens to be bored every time he thinks about it well, thats a normal part of growing up, isnt it?

But still, Herbs bored. Surely, he thinks, a little romantic correspondence on the side can do no harm

Shes a Magicians Daughter
Meanwhile, far away on the planet New Land, a nice young woman named Spring is feeling anything but bored. She just wishes she were. Shes been living with her widowed father, Gabriel, a practicing sorcerer, keeping house and helping out with the business. Its been a good life.

With a Big Secret.
But Gabriel has discovered hitherto-unknown magical secrets that can bring their possessor great riches, absolute power, and forbidden knowledge. To keep them safe, hes sorcerous locked them deep within his daughters mind, where only her own true love or failing that, someone she likes a lot can access themso to speak.

Trouble Ensues.
When Gabriel is killed under suspicious circumstances, Spring flees to the austere Order of Companions. There, grieving and lonely, she places a personal ad, looking for a pen pal with whom she can discuss botany. Little does she know that shes actually placed an ad in Play Plant magazine, and that her new pen pal, Herb thinks shes interested in romance.

Meanwhile, an ambitious wizard has learned of the existence of Springs secrets. And hell do anything to get themincluding the obvious.

Piers Anthony is a prolific fantasy author who has written 140 published works over 53 years. Anthony is one of the world's most popular fantasy authors, and a New York Times bestseller twenty-one times over. His Xanth novels have been read and loved by millions of readers around the world and he daily receives hundreds of letters from his devoted fans. In addition to the Xanth series, Anthony is the author of many other best-selling works, including: Bio of a Space Tyrant, Eroma, E.S.P Worm and the heart warming Letters to Jenny. He has also won critical acclaim for his mainstream fiction.

The Secret of Spring is Jo Anne Taeusch's first novel.

From Publishers Weekly

Best known for his pun-filled, long-running Xanth light fantasy series, Anthony pairs here with a fan and first-time author for a stand-alone novel of improbable plot and lackluster characters. Vegan Herb Moss, a member of a race of genetically engineered plant-humans on a distant planet, is bored by his nice but dull girlfriend, Lily. When he answers a personal ad in Play Plant magazine, however, Herb gets more than he bargained for: beautiful Spring, daughter of a dead sorcerer who magically sealed the secret to extended life inside his child, to be revealed when she mates with her one true love. Spring is hunted by her father's enemy, the evil mage Zygote, and Herb and his friends are her only hope for evading the villain who seeks her maidenhead. The authors' mix of science and fantasy is awkward at best, and the characters never rise above stereotype, from the reluctant hero Herb with his antiquated philosophy about moody, troublemaking women to spunky-yet-understanding Spring, to Lily with her belief that "the love of a good woman" can bring out the good in any man, even the evil Zygote. While Anthony's author's note proclaims he found "cute cleverness" in Taeusche's original manuscript, it's doubtful that even die-hard Xanth fans will discover much here to hold their attention. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Anthony's latest collaboration (after Dream a Little Dream, 1999, with Julie Brady, etc.) with one of his more persistent admirers features the standard combination of cute witches, evil wizards, lovable quasi-humans, and jocularly lascivious romancing (puns and lovers) in a reasonably inventive, Anthony-fantasy setting where hero Herb, heroine Spring, and villain Zygote have lots of neat stuff to do. -- Copyright 2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Library : Science Fiction
Formats : EPUB
ISBN : 9780812564877