If it was possible, I would have rated this book 3 1/2 stars. However, since it is part of the a series that I love, I am somewhat biased and rated it 4 stars.Book 18 is about Gary Gar, a gargoyle who is filtering the water that comes into Xanth from Mundania. He is finding that it is becoming more and more polluted, to the point that it is difficult to keep the contamination out. So he does what every other Xanth citizen does when they have a question that they can't answer - they seek out the Good Magician. Gary gets his answer, to find the philter. Along the way, he had to transformed into a man, work with Queen Iris, (who took some youth elixir and lost 70 years), and had to tutor Grundy and Rapunzel's daughter Surprise.They find that they need to utilize the services of Hiatas, the Zombie Master and Millie the Ghost's son. He is now 40 years old, still a bachelor, still living at home, and has no ambition to do anything else. Come to find out, he had been bewitched by Desiree the Dryad when he was a youth. For a chance to see Desiree again, he joins this group.They all end up in the Region of Madness. While in there, they discover the ruins of a city called Stone Hinge. With Gary reading the stones they found, and Iris generating the illusion of the long lost city, Stone Hinge comes to life. Yet shortly thereafter, illusions start appearing before the group that Iris did not create. They need to figure out the source of these illusions, find the philter, and get out of the Region of Madness before it's too late.This is a pretty good Xanth installment, and certainly won't disappoint fans of the series. We get to know more about Queen Iris, who has really been a fringe character, albeit a major one, whose background was never shown in detail until now. As with the other books in the series, a reader can pick it up and enjoy it without having read the other books first. While the characters feel more fleshed out if you have read the prior 17 books, a reader is not lost if they haven't. It was a fun book to read; funny, quick to read, and simply put, brain candy.
