Well-Tempered Clavicle(2011)

Piers Anthony

For an animated skeleton, kept alive by the Magic of Xanth, Picka Bones has lived a fairly uneventful life. The high points of his day consist of patrolling graveyards with his sister, Joy’nt, and picking out tunes on his ribs with his own collar bones.

All that changes, however, when three curious creatures, a dog called Woofer, a bird called Tweeter, and a cat known as Midrange, challenge Picka to discover what magical talent he might possess by seeking out the enchanted princesses Dawn and Eve.

But Princess Eve has gone to Hades, and Princess Dawn has troubles of her own. At the ripe age of twenty-one, she is still unmarried, having failed to find a suitable prince who is not intimidated by her power and beauty.

When Picka, Joy’nt, Eve, and the three musical pets ask the Good Magician Humfrey for answers to their perplexing problems, he responds by dispatching them on a daring mission—to locate and tame Caprice Castle, a feral palace so errant that even Humfrey can’t determine its whereabouts. For legend has it that the Castle contains the fabled Pundora’s Box, which once contained the worst puns in Xanth, until they were carelessly released a century before.