The Moment of the Magician
Alan Dean Foster
 The wizard Clothahump described the swamps of the south as "tropical, friendly, and largely uninhabited" when he sent Jon-Tom the Spellsinger and Mudge the Otter to investigate the rising power of a new magician, Marcus the Ineluctable. Along the way they encounter warring colonies of tough-talking prairie dogs, magical mime-vines, a mammoth mountain of living muck and a hidden colony of dreaded Plated Folk.