Ogre, Ogre
Cover, featuring the character Smash
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| Author | Piers Anthony |
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| Cover artist | Darrell K. Sweet |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Xanth series |
| Genre | Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Del Rey Books |
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Publication date
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October 1982 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 307 pp (paperback 18th printing) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 8389131 |
| Preceded by | Centaur Aisle |
| Followed by | Night Mare |
Ogre, Ogre is the fifth book of the Xanth series by Piers Anthony.
Smash the half-ogre (offspring of Crunch the ogre and a human Curse Fiend) goes to see the Good Magician Humfrey to get his question answered, although he doesn't know what his question is. The magician's answer: Travel to the Ancestral Ogres to find what you seek. His payment is to guard Tandy, a half-nymph, for one year.
They travel about Xanth, and Smash acquires other young women who travel with him and whom he protects. Along the way, he is infected with the Eye Queue vine, which makes him intelligent (although actually invoking his human half) making him distressed as ogres are not supposed to be smart in any way. As he finds an antidote to his intelligence, he undergoes several adventures; saving Tandy from the dream realm in the gourd and smashing the Gap Dragon. Soon he finds matches and finds solutions to all of the women, who leave one by one.
The book starts off with Tandy the half-nymph being harassed by the nasty demon Fiant while trying to sleep. She has the talent of throwing tantrums that can stun or destroy, but her talent is ineffective against the demon, so she decides to visit her father Crombie at Castle Roogna to see if he can help. Having no means of travel, however, she decides to catch a night mare to take her there. She succeeds, at the price of being battered, except the mare takes her to the Good Magician's castle instead, where she is admitted without challenges due to the difficulties she went through riding the mare.
Cut to a year later, we find Smash the half-ogre travelling to the Good Magician Humfrey seeking to solve a vague dissatisfaction about himself. Using the best of his ogre qualities (strength and naive stupidity), plus his clumsy knowledge of human customs, as well as the occasional bright flash of human intelligence, he navigates his way into the Magician's castle passing various obstacles such as a basilisk and a pond of firewater. Once Smash gains entrance, though, he forgets all about his question. Magician Humphrey gives him an answer anyway, telling him to travel to the Ancestral Ogres and take Tandy with him, and guard her.
On their travels, Smash and Tandy blunder into an Eye Queue vine, which embeds itself into Smash's head and provides him with human intelligence so he converses in the human way instead of spouting simple ogre rhymes. He soon discovers that the vine also helps give him good ideas, as not all the problems he and Tandy encounter can be bashed to pieces. After the vine, they encounter an assortment of females of various magical races, each needing to fulfill a personal quest...a dryad who needs to protect her tree from woodsmen, wingless fairy John looking for her similarly incorrectly named counterpart to switch back, Centaur Chem, a longtime friend with the talent of magic mapping who wants to chart more of Xanth, Blythe Brassie who wants to leave her hypnogourd homeworld to come to the real Xanth, a mermaid looking for love, and others. Unfortunately also during their travels, Tandy gets trapped in the hypnogourd world and has her soul wrenched from her, though she is later freed by the others. Smash enters back into the gourd and forages a deal with the world spokesperson (in the form of a coffin): Smash will give his soul to the gourd under a 90-day lien in exchange for Tandy's soul. He then has 90 days to find the dread Night Stallion, ruler of the gourd world, and negotiate to void the lien.
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