Nitpicker's Guide to Piers Anthony's "The Source of Magic"

General comment: Crombie's magical talent allows him to point to the correct direction for any question, even if Crombie doesn't know the direction himself (otherwise, the talent would be useless). Assuming this magic always works, it would be possible to place Crombie in a circle surrounded by the 26 letters of the alphabet, think of ANY question, and ask "Where is the first letter of the best answer to this question", "where is the second letter", etc... until Crombie's talent spells out the answer. This would save a lot of trips and service to the good magician, assuming, of course, some limitation on Crombie's power doesn't prevent this.
page 12: Chester's "Uncle Herman" is probably a pun on the television show "The Munsters".
page 13: Chester claims he watered a gluebark tree with urine and it survived. Wouldn't the chemical salts and waste material in the urine actually cause most plants to die?
page 16: Bink describes a manticora as having the "body of a lion". How does Bink know what a lion is? I realize Anthony is trying to give the reader a description of a manticora but he usually qualifies it by saying something similar to "body of the Mundane animal known as a lion".
page 87: Chester exclaims, "A hundred years!", but Bink responds, "What he means, Crombie...". Shouldn't Bink respond to Chester?
page 96: Humfrey notes that "Maybe [Grundy] asked the wrong Question". I wonder if anyone has ever asked, "What is the best question I could ask you and the answer to that question?", which would seem to be easier than having to worry about which question to ask.
page 159: The constellations Anthony describes in this section are all real-life Mundane constellations. Anthony refers to Orion as a "giant", although he is more commonly portrayed as a hunter. He also describes Cetus as a "Mundane whale", instead of as a sea-monster.
page 261: Humfrey (speaking for the Brain Coral) tells Bink the magic phrase is "Xanth, I free you!". However, on page 268, Bink actually says, "I free you, Xanth". This is a fairly minor difference, but demon-releasing 'magic words' are usually quite precise.

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Last modified stardate: 20070609.123532

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