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Imbrium is the main character of this story. She's the author's first female protagonist in this series, and though she is a horse (a night mare to be exact), she's still handled with the same sort of disrespect that Anthony frequently frames his female characters. At one point she is made powerless because a man tricks her into being dominated by him (he gets on her back and fits her with a bit, and she can't escape), and later the same man turns out to be a shapeshifter who dominates her by shifting into his horse form while she's "in season." Convenient, no, that the female's one weakness is her complete inability to resist the sexy man? Her urges overcome her and she's done in by her own attraction! This is the kind of thing that makes a lot of these books sound like a disturbing boy fantasy. That stuff can really be dangerous. But I'll look at the story too.

It's pretty inventive, though transparent in places. I still like the "gourd" world--the dream underground of sorts where nightmares come from. It was very clear that the man wearing a gold band was the same person as the horse wearing it, so I don't know what Anthony was trying to pull with that revelation. I also thought the succession of kings was interesting . . . the existing king was in an apparently hypnotic state and couldn't rule any more, so the successor got on the throne, and one by one their consciousnesses were captured by the Horseman. The rule was that Xanth could only be ruled by a Magician-class talented person. And when they start running out of possible kings, oh dearie me, it strikes them to wonder . . . hey, maybe we could get chicks to do it! Girl kings! No one ever thought of that before, even though the definitive factor for eligibility was supposed to be their magical strength. The very fact that anyone had to consider this a revelation is pretty telling. But for some reason, especially when I was a kid, I found it engaging to find out who'd be the next king to lead Xanth through an influx of attacks from Mundania while fearing being the next to be captured.