The Incarnations of Immortality series were my Anthony crack of choice

Those ones I still have, but haven't re-read in a long time. I'm sure I will one of these days, though....since I still have them...

Having decided it's past time I read War and Peace, I ordered a copy of the Pevear translation, vowing to read it in a couple of months when I'm between WIPs.

Maybe I should've bought a translation available in paperback, because this thing is right up there with a Riverside Shakespeare or Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible for weight. I knew W&P is a massively long book, but...wow. Taking this thing with me on the bus, which is the main time I have to read, is going to do interesting things to my shoulders.

No it's not. Take that back.

No! Bad fiction like this keeps me going until Amazon replaces my Kindle so I can finish re-reading Cryptonomicon. Since my original copy is in Mississippi.

I went through a brief Piers Anthony phase. Incarnations of Immortality was interesting. The Bio of a Space Tyrant series was half fun mindless space opera, half pubescent sexual fantasy. I read one Xanth novel -- enjoyed it, but realized that a novel series based on puns would wear thin quickly.

The Incarnations of Immortality series were my Anthony crack of choice

I got to Being A Green Mother (I think that's what it was called), before I gave up and threw the damn thing across the room. I was already sick to death of the series by Wielding a Red Sword wherein the "hero" spends most of the time agonizing over how to get laid without guilt within the context of his religion or something. Oh, and then Satan shows up.

I read part of one Xanth book and threw it across the room.

Yeah, the Incarnations of Immortality series turned into a soap opera about this one family of divinely attractive womanly women and stopped being a very interesting series about the mechanics of Death and Time etc. On a Pale Horse is still the best of them.

On a Pale Horse is still the best of them.

Absolutely. Really enjoyed that book.

Then the enjoyment curve took a swift dive.

The mechanics of Death and all that were brilliant, and I was really looking forward to how Anthony handled the other Incarnations, but, sadly, no, it became all about the difficulties of having a serious relationship when living backwards, and how to be a caring Earth Mother while holding down a career as a Fate, and all that.

edit: along with some very self-serving Author's Notes about how hard his life is.

edit: along with some very self-serving Author's Notes about how hard his life is.

Always, ALWAYS with the "It's so hard to be Awesomest Me, you just don't know, man, you just don't know..."

Fuck you, Piers. Just...fuck you.

It's so odd that this conversation is happening right now. This week, for no reason other than they were on ND's bookshelf and I needed some bedtime brain candy, I picked up one of the later Xanth books and read it. Then I read its sequel the next night.

I totally agree that Anthony is an ass (from what I can glean from the Author's Notes) and that the books have all kinds of flaws, but they've been fun to reread nonetheless.