bbrick@spock.UUCP (Bill Brickman '88 ) (02/20/85)
Here are some books by Piers Anthony that you should read before making any opinions about his style of writing. The Apprentice Adept: Incarnations of Immortality: Battlecircle: --------------------- ---------------------------- ------------- Split Infinity On a Pale Horse Sos the Rope Blue Adept Bearing An Hourglass Var the Stick Juxtaposition With a Tangled Skein Neq the Sword Wielding a Red Sword Mute Being a Green Mother Omnivore Orn Macroscope Kirlian Quest Rings of Ice OX These books show a serious but still good side of Piers Anthony's writings. The character is still a thinking/acting/self-conscience person, but the background in which the character lives/dies/thinks is more dangerous or more complex than the Xanth characters, and the endings are not always ..lived happily ever after. In _M_u_t_e the ending does not seem to comply with the story until you reread it. The main character does not "win" , but the human race is bettered. Now that I've told the basic ending , I have to tell the story. The main character is a mutant who has the incredible power (i.e. Talent ! ) to ... Well maybe I would give that away, but I will tell you that the plot basically is founded on little situations , like in a quest, that the main character thinks through. In the Incarnation series the main characters are again people with incredible powers (talents again) that make up the Five Incarnations. They are Death, Time, Fate, Nature, and War. The characters again do the same thing. They think out ways to get around problems , using their powers to get out of tight spots. These books are excellent !!! I thought the endings for these books , even if he is using the old formula, were great. All the books in that list , under Incarnations are excellence, even if only the first two are acually out. I thought the first two were great, so the next must be even better (This is the opposite of what happened to the Xanth novels. I hope ...). I sincerely hope that you read these books on the list above (all of them !) and enjoy all. Thanks , Bill Brickman P.S. Does anybody like Anne McCaffrey ??? Eddings ??? Frank Herbert ??? PLEASE write something. Don't be afraid to ask questions either. Just write something about them.
liang@cvl.UUCP (Eli Liang) (02/22/85)
> > P.S. Does anybody like Anne McCaffrey ??? Eddings ??? Frank Herbert ??? > PLEASE write something. Don't be afraid to ask questions either. > Just write something about them. I've read most, if not all of the "novels" put out by each one of them. Herbert is still my favorite out of McCaffrey, Eddings, and Herbert, although, there are a few works by Herbert I did not really enjoy. Godmakers is probably one of those. Besides Dune, one of my favorite is The Dosadi(sp?) Experiment. Of McCaffrey's novels, the ones I liked the least were the Dragonsinger's series. Dragon-riders was passable along with Moreth. Her non-serialized works, are on the whole, pretty good. Eddings was good at the beginning of his Belgariad series because of the freshness, but seemed to go down hill a bit in Endgame. I've read many of the Pier's Anthony books too and I think that Bio of a Space Tyrant has got to be his worst (in my opinion that is). If I had been a slower reader, I would have passed away somewhere in the middle I'm sure. As it was, I barely survived to the end of vol. 1. -eli -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eli Liang --- University of Maryland Computer Vision Lab, (301) 454-4526 ARPA: liang@cvl, eli@mit-mc, eli@mit-prep CSNET: liang@cvl UUCP: {seismo,rlgvax,allegra,brl-bmd,nrl-css}!umcp-cs!cvl!liang