mrose%uci-750a@sri-unix.UUCP (09/28/84)
From: Marshall Rose <mrose@uci-750a> The second of the series focuses on Chronos, the incarnation who controls time. Time is around to ensure that "cause and effect" works. To do this, Chronos, like Merlin, lives his life backwards, so it's "effect and cause" to him. Hence, the person who assumes the office of time leaves office when he's born which is before (after) he took the office later (earlier) in life. Needless to say, this gives Chronos a lot of advantages towards the end (beginning) of his term. Unfortunately, Chronos is most vulnerable that the beginning (end) of this term, when he knows virtually nothing and all the other incarnations know everything that already happened. Needless to say, the Father of Lies, takes subtle advantage of this several times to win his dominion over creation. The book is a *lot* of fun. Anthony spends a lot of time discussing the paradoxes that can happen when Time (and others Time designates) move about in time (with his hourglass, Time can do all kinds of nifty temporal hocus-pocus). There's also a lot of humorous shenanigan's that Chronos gets himself into when learning about the hourglass. A few scenes were so funny I had to put the book down until I could stop giggling. I have one complaint about the book and one about the series: for the book, some of the constraints placed on the use of the hourglass seem to be artificial (i.e., inserted only to prevent the protagonist from easily working things out). Perhaps not. for the series: you'd think that the incarnations would have a manual telling them all about their new powers and so on. It'd save a lot of times and mistakes (and make the Father of Lies' job a lot harder). /mtr
mr@hou2h.UUCP (M.RINDSBERG) (10/14/85)
The book "Bearing an Hourglass" by Piers Anthony has finally come out in paperback and is on shelves at the major bookstores. Mark