Cube Route by Piers Anthony (2004, Paperback, Reprint)

Cube Route started off on the right foot with a good main character named Cue, who was nicknamed Cube. She went to the good magician to ask a question which has become status que in the Xanth books, off on her mission, she runs into the usual characters, some significate, some not so significate and she is innundated with horrible puns.
The story lines seem to be reaching the point where Piers Anthony is trying to get as many of his fans ideas stuffed into a novel as possible. Sometimes you are afraid to open a new Xanth story for fear that the puns will burst off of the pages, they are so crammed in there.
There were some very good characters in Cube Route, I believe it had more strong characters than some of his recent Xanth books. It did go a little over the line for young readers I believe. Xanth has always had magical dangers and adult conspiracy humor to entertain the reader, but Piers Anthony brought in a much darker side in this novel. It became more good versus evil dealing with rape and suicide.
I recommend this book for the die-hard Xanth reader, but if you have a pre-teen or young teen that enjoys these book, you might want to have a discussion after they read it, about what they thought of certain parts of the book and how they would handle being in that type of situation.
Over-all I would give it a B+.