Obviously the title is yet another pun. Prince Dolph is dealing with figuring out which of two girls betrothed to him is going to actually be his wife. (Guess polygamy isn't allowed in Xanth. A pity.)I think this book was where I started to lose interest in this series. I wasn't a huge fan in the first place; I thought they were basically readable, and wanted to know all the details because my best friend loved them and we had little jokes that referenced the series, but Piers Anthony started sacrificing the integrity--ahem--of his stories to make reader input more obvious here, and one way that manifested in Isle of View was that he actually inserted a reader as a character.I honestly could have said "Aw, that's sweet" if it had stayed a single book's touching shout-out. Jenny Elf was based on a real Jenny who had been badly injured in a car wreck, and Anthony's inclusion of a Jenny-based character was sort of his way of acknowledging an important fan. But he inserted this Jenny Elf character not so much as a Xanth character, but as a fanfiction character because Jenny preferred the elves from a different series and she wanted her character to look like ElfQuest elves, not Xanth elves. Like I said, I could have overlooked it if it was once. But Anthony also let readers send in puns, give feedback on what he should do with his characters, and have a lot of say-so in what he churned out. It sort of started to become a free-for-all of fan service and I have never liked it when that sort of thing starts to show.Story-wise, this book focuses on how a young winged centaur got stolen by goblins, and that's because they want a royal goblin named Gwendolyn to get tutored by him and ride around on his back to hide her disability. Goblins don't look well on disabled goblins. Not sure why a goblin doesn't just ask, you know? But maybe they thought it wouldn't work? (There sure wouldn't have been any kidnapping adventure!) In the middle of this is the myopic Jenny Elf, who somehow managed to "stumble into" Xanth. She tries to help the kidnapped centaur but gets caught up in the mess. Even though the goblins "win" rights to keep young Che Centaur, his mom isn't exactly going to just let them keep her baby. So it's time for a winged monster attack! Huzzah!The resolution Dolph makes about which fiancée he'll marry is not handled badly, at least. It's nice that we occasionally have a guy who isn't just handed a girl who feels the same as he does and they get to live happily ever after and have new kids to go on new quests to find each other and fall in love. However, I must say any book that involves female centaurs will inevitably talk about their boobies, and any book that involves Nada will inevitably talk about her boobies, and did you know this trivia about boobies? Well, boobies! Just in case you were wondering about their boobies. Because I know you were.(Boobies.)
Man from Mundania, the twelfth Xanth volume, intervenes between this one and The Heaven Cent, which I reviewed here earlier this year; but Barb and I couldn't wait to read this one, since it provides the solution to Dolph's problem of two Betrothees. And solve it Anthony does, in his own perfect fashion, with everybody happy (this is, after all, Xanth :-) ) and some personal growth that comes from making a decision to do the right thing. Others besides Dolph, too, will be faced with ethical dilemmas and choices throughout the book, and the ways in which they rise to these challenges make for fascinating reading. A unique feature of this book is the tie- in to the Elfquest series, with Jenny's character coming from that world; I could relate to this from having read the first Elfquest short story anthology, which I haven't reviewed here yet. (A very special Author's Note explains the origin of this character!)Xanth's Adult Conspiracy (to conceal from minors the secret of stork summoning for reproduction), which is prominent in Dolph's situation, makes for some mild sexually-based humor; but in practice it makes the point that sexual innocence for kids is healthy and that underage physical sex gratification isn't desirable or inevitable -a message our culture needs to hear. In fact, Anthony's treatment of sex and love is quite chaste and wholesome, with a strong celebration of monogamy and commitment as a basis for loving family life.
What do You think about Isle Of View (1990)?
SUMMARY:LovelornLoveworn Love LostPerplexed Prince Dolph, Xanth's precocious shapeshifter, should be in love but isn't. Nonetheless, he must chose between two fiancées -- Nada the uninterested and Electra the uninteresting -- or all three of them will suffer the most dire consequences. Luckily a convenient catastrophe has popped up to distract Dolph form his dilemma -- the foal-napping of young Che Centaur by goblins. And the only one who knows where Che is is a nice but remarkably naive elflike gir named Jenny from the World of Two Moons. If anyone can save the missing centaur...she sure can't.
—Ward Bond
The last Xanth book that I read30 December 2011tWell, I am finally at the end of all of the Xanth novels that I have read. I really do not know why I went through them all and wrote a comment on them, but I guess it is something that I felt that I had to do. I guess I really did persist through these novels, but then at the time that I was reading them, I was enjoying them, however I stopped here, for numerous reasons. I guess one of the main reasons is that I temporarily moved away from reading. While I would still read during this period of my life, I ended up spending more time with friends, and unfortunately reading is not something that one can necessarily do with friends. The most social aspect of reading, such as this website, is when one joins a bookclub, reads the same book, and then gets together and discusses them. However my friends were not real readers at the time, so I guess I was a bit of the odd one out. However, when I moved on from these friends of mine, I began to pick up books again. I guess in the end, reading is in my blood.tIt was also helpful going through these books and I also discovered the Spellsinger series, which I have read all of, but never actually put on the list of books that I have read. I do not mean the Goodreads list, but rather an external list that I am going through, and as I add a book to Goodreads, I delete it from the list. It is slow work, but at least it encourages me to think about all of the books that I have read.
—David Sarkies
I really should have loved a book about winged centaurs more. Don't get me wrong, I loved it but I found myself thinking,"get on with it!"a little too much. I wish the book had more Dolph, Electra, and Nalda and less goblins. I also didn't like the thesaurus demon.The ending made up for the books slow parts though, I really enjoyed watching Dolph truly see Electra. And my heart swelled for Electra as she spent her wedding night, it was sweet and romantic. I never expected such a sweetly romantic scene from Xanth.
—Theresa
