Centaur Isle, by Piers Anthony

King Trent needs a vacation. Actually, he wants to go to Mundania to settle a trade agreement, but he’s telling everyone he needs a vacation. King Trent’s only planning on being gone for a week, so he puts Dor on the throne as temporary King. The week passes, and Dor manages not to destroy the kingdom or fight too much with Irene. But when the anticipated day arrives, King Trent and Queen Iris do not appear. Dor must go on pretending that nothing is wrong, while knowing that something awful must have happened to them. But Kings are not allowed to go haring off, so all Dor can do is wait. But Irene is adamant that he must go to Mundania and rescue her parents. So they put together a traveling party and go off to southern Xanth to find something that will help them find King Trent. And Dor tries to make sense of King Trent’s parting words, that ‘honesty is always the best policy.’

Here we are, back for another wild adventure in Xanth. Only along with bad puns, now we must deal with sum truly aweful spelling. But all in good fun, as is the norm. Anthony gives us some good character development between Queen Iris and Irene. The trip into Mundania is good for many laughs, as are most Xanth novels. I say that fun reads are definitely necessary once in a while.