I had liked the first 7 books of this series when I read them years ago, so when I learned that Piers had written book 8, I wanted to finish off the series. His publisher wouldn’t touch it though. However all was not lost, he published it himself, and I spotted it on Amazon and bought a copy, which I just finished reading.
My God, this thing sucks so bad it just created a black hole in my bookshelves. All the publishers who refused to touch this book really knew what they were doing. I will never pick up another Piers book if i live to be 200. We have the obligatory child main character, who ends up screwing the whole world (I’m not exaggerating by much here), we have a sympathetically presented character who is into boys aged 6 - 8, it’s just a mercy that he doesn’t indulge himself onscreen. On top of that the book has all the worst aspects of Piers work, and none of the redeeming ones.
If there are any others out there who liked the Incarnations of Immortality series and are tempted, then for the sake of your sanity resist. There isn’t a bottle of brain bleach big or strong enough. I now have the dilemma of what to do with this fetid piece of crap that is pretending to be a book. Take heed, if you see this in a bookshop, run, don’t walk, screaming for the exit.
And you know what’s even funnier. Do you want to guess what the next book on my reading pile is? Yes you guessed it, I am going to finish the “Sword of Truth” series. Confessor awaits. Why I do this to myself I don’t know.
I gave up on Anthony a long time ago when his prediliction for sexy little girls in his stories started to creep me out and when his Xanth novels turned into 132% pun. Dude needs to take a break.
I liked some of his stuff when I was younger, but my God nobody knows how to take an interesting premise and absolutely run it into the ground like Piers. It’s almost like he can’t stop himself from crapping out novel after novel in a series. And yeah, his fascination with little girls got progressively more skeevy as time went on.
I had no clue there was an eighth book, but frankly after how difficult it was for me to get through books six and seven (and with books two through five each becoming less good), there’s not a chance in hell I’d ever touch a book eight. What the hell could he put in there? He’s dealt with Death, Time, Nature, Fate, War, Satan and God. What now, the ineffable human spirit?
Screw that.
Oh, and I read the first few SoT books, and thought they were okay. But at some point I stopped reading them and never felt horridly compelled to go back. I have other books more worth my time, or potentially so. There’s too many good books in the world to waste your time on things you know will make you suffer, seriously.
I loved the first book in the series, and couldn’t wait to read more. Each book left me more and more dissapointed. I don’t remember exactly where I quit reading in disgust, but thanks for the heads up.
I also used to like the Xanth novels, same problem.
Well, given the name, and considering that there’s a major character from books seven and eight representing an Incarnation who hasn’t had a turn, it doesn’t take much to guess that the subject is Nox, the incarnation of Night.
I’ll second the ‘thanks for warning me.’ I might take a chance on looking just to see how bad a trainwreck it is, but the advance notice is still appreciated.
I like the Incarnations series (when I’m in the right mood), but I’ll be skipping 8. He should’ve stopped on 6 but then he’s never known when to quit. He made Satan into a nice person! I can’t decide if he just CAN’T write evil characters or if he actually believes no one is really evil.
I rarely suggest this but: burn it. That’ll prevent anyone else from reading that copy at least.
Fool of a Took! A codex of the Dark Novelist can be destroyed by mortal fire, for its memory will linger and grow until at last it has utterly consumed any unwary enough to read it. Only by returning the codex to the very printing press in which it was–um–printed can the tome be destroyed and its spirit exorcised.
(Translation: my wife, who is very young, has bought it and wants me to read it with her. How I will escape is as yet unclear.)
I couldn’t get through the seventh book…wouldn’t bother with 8 even without being warned.
Speaking of Anthony screwing up his series, the third Geodessey book was truly dire. The penis-eating scene almost made me give up, but I finished the book.
I’m assuming from the title that this one’s about Nyx or Nox…whichever he used. I hadn’t even heard he was doing one…I’d thought the last one was a logical endpoint. Then again, we are talking about Anthony.
Incarnations is the very definition of “downward slope” – On A Pale Horse was terrific, and is was all downhill from there. Time was good, Nature was decent enough, but by the time we got to War, I only made it halfway through before quitting on the series.
Please tell me that you’re joking and that book doesn’t truly exist.
As SpazCat mentioned previously, his prediliction for young girls, and then the basing of some of these characters on his daughters skeeved me out.
I read a lot of his books when I was much younger (ie. in my early teens, not my early 30’s). I can only assume that I was naive enough not to pick it up the first time through.
I guess that shows how much attention I’d paid in books six and seven, since I’d only sort of remembered the existence of someone who pulled the strings to get the baby. I’d forgotten her name, or that she was an incarnation until you mentioned her. Now I remember her, and all her mechanations, though.
Yep, still planning to skip this book. Except, I’m a classic link-clicker about half the time. Half the links I see posted on this board saying, “Warning” or “Don’t Click!” I click and half I don’t. I never google something I’m told not to google, but I do click reasonably often.
I think that what this means is that I won’t search out this book, but now that I know how terrible it is, I might be forced to get it if it leaps out at me in a used book store. I’d ask one of the incarnations to save me, but they’re all screwed up and the next thing I know, 70 copies will arrive on my doorstep.
What a shame. A book about Nox should have real potential, but as you say…Piers does have this annoying habit of running a good concept right into the ground. And then jumping up and down on it. Then digging it up and slapping it around some more.
Why? Why did he keep going? For what unholy purpose? He kept saying he was through with the Incarnations series, but he kept writing another book, then another…
I always thought Nox’s story would be interesting. I’m a little disappointed to hear that it’s not, but I’m not sure that I could read Anthony now. The man is a little misogynistic, like water is a little wet, then add the ephebophilia, and now it sounds like he’s moved on to pedophilia…Ick.
Xanth was amusing when I was in high school, though, and I always liked his Author’s Notes. They were like a spectacular train wreck and you couldn’t look away.
They still are. I just finished his latest Xanth (“Air Apparent”) and the Author’s Note is true to form.
Hey, everyone has that one thing they can’t NOT do but are incredibly embarrassed by! Reading Anthony is mine. I was too ashamed to even put it on my GoodReads list…
Having watched my Grandfather–who also lives out in the middle of nowhere with no neighbours in either direction for 15 miles–old age and too much time to yourself can really bring out the less-endearing traits in a guy. This seems to have happened to Piers as well. But I don’t have to live with him, and I wouldn’t buy any of his books but Xanth (I mean, you know exactly what you’re going to get with each new one ), so that’s fine by me.
I wish he’d been able to finish the Mode series before losing his last touches of skill. (I haven’t read the finale, but the reviews didn’t look too promising.)
Death: Interesting concept. One of Anthony’s better books, for what that’s worth.
Time: Eh, not horrible. Spent more time on sub-plots than involving the office.
War: Pretty good. Straight forward.
Fate: Plodded along and rarely gave any idea what Fate actually did.
Nature: Terrible. A long, dull tale.
Satan: First half was interesting. The second half was a rehash of the first five books which could have been interesting if done right, but it wasn’t.
God: I barely remember this one except that it was really, really bad.
I think the strongest ones were when Piers Anthony had a firm grasp on the duties of the Incarnation and could make that a major point to the book (Death & War). The further away he got from being able to explain exactly what the Incarnation did (Time and, more so, Fate) the worse the book was. Nature could have been more like the Death & War books since the office was straight-forward but he instead dorked around with a poorly written story.
Plus, by the end, the whole thing was so incestual that you could only roll your eyes at how Death was the cousin of War’s wife who was the daughter of Fate who was Time’s lover who was the second cousin to Nature who was the mother of Fate’s second aspect who was the daughter of Fate’s third aspect who was the lover of Satan who was the brother of Death’s mother*… etc, etc, etc
*Connections made up for dramamtic purposes since the last thing I’m going to do is re-read those books to make a proper flowchart.
), so that’s fine by me.