I didn't try those

They were well written, perhaps his best work, but I wasn't too happy with his implicit theology, so I probably won't reread them.

We are going to have to agree to disagree on that one. This was the series that caused me to quit reading his books entirely for a lot of years.

I felt there was enough detail, humor, and narrative tension in the first books IMHO, but then it was getting, yes, uninspired. The first characters were fun, and reasonably interesting, but the ones introduced after book 10 felt a bit flat to me, and so were the jokes, which had a lot to do with why I quit reading the series.

My wife reads a ton and she also stopped in the Xanth series, because they were no longer doing Piers justice, and she felt that they were degrading her overall opinion of his work.

First, Piers Anthony's Total Recall is NOT Verhoeven's movie Total Recall - that is based on a Philip K. Dick short.

I find the writing style in Xanth very uninspiring as well, but, that style is not where his writing shines in the Xanth books (I mean, from my knowledge of the 3+/40 that I've read), the Xanth books are all about puns. ALL ABOUT. He is simply writing to show you how intelligent he is with his word usage. Yes, he uses puns a LOT in his books, but they are never the focus of the writing in any of his works other than Xanth. If you don't like Xanth, don't forgo his other works.

Piers Anthony is a very unique writer in my opinion as far as his style goes, because I find that he doesn't necessarily have a repeating style or "voice" I can hear carry through his different novels (they do stay consistent within series though, which I find to be indicative of very good writing.) He is one of the very few authors that, if I were reading any of a number of his books and didn't know who the author was, there would be no way for me to pick that it was him (other than a good guess because of knowing how he is.) I still find that happening when I read any one of his I haven't read. I go "woah, this is different." That is why I like him so much I think, he has a lot of very, very, very different ideas even within fantasy/sci-fi, if I want something that I don't know what I'm going to get (in a world of author's where even if you don't know the stories, you know what you're basically going to get when you pick up one of their books), I just pick up something of his that I haven't read.

Chthon and Phthor, Mute, Hasan, Shade of the Tree, Mercycle, Killobyte, and Firefly as I mentioned before - I find them all interesting and very original from each other.

Firefly is one of my favorite books of all time, even though the 1 chapter that is one of the hardest things to read ever.

I've not even read any of the Virtual Mode books (I have them), nice to hear your endorsement. The Adept series is my favorite series of his that I've read, up until the 4th where it starts to go downhill. The Incarnations are also great. The trilogy Omnivore, Ox, and Orn are also top notch. The Tarot books are just a crazy exercise in having an idea dictate what gets written, they aren't written greatly, certainly, but they are, all together now: DIFFERENT!

And again, if some of his doesn't catch you, keep trying others, you may be surprised.

Hmm the series in a nutshell, is individuals who had no reason to live or stay in one dimension. Each dimension/slice over is slightly different but almost the same, repeat that and some weird 4th dimension travel. Rules change per plane/dimension...

Thinking back now it's probably on par with his early Xanth novels. He seriously needs to re-write his novels for the adult audience...

I'll have to agree...

A planet with an alternate side where magic exists? Not sure why that's so bad. Although there were several things that were odd, mostly society structure; Although at the end of one of the books an android became a human, and her alternate could become a female robot harpy... that was particularly odd.

It's sorta like tofu, it's an acquired taste... one i lost the taste for too :(

On the bright side it introduced me to Pole Chess :)

The first books, sure. From what i read he didn't know if he was going to go past the third book, when he did he started compiling huge lists of puns he could use. Like the Cat-Ass-Trophy...

Of course if i could do it all over again, i'd skip reading the Xanth series and instead get a girlfriend...

RE: Adept series comments.


I find the first three of these to be his most lyrical, beautiful, well-written books of his that I've read. He inspired an appreciation of horses in my that I didn't have before. I find the world and society to be one of the most interesting in sci-fi/fantasy books along with Marion Zimmer-Bradley's Darkover books and Joan D. Vinge's world of Tiamat and it's universe in The Snow Queen/The Summer Queen. I do admit that one of the reasons I like them so much also are the games. He writes the playing of the games so detailed it really gets me going. Games, magic, nature, good and evil, it's all my sort of thing.

*face-palm* You are so right. I forgot all about that interactive text adventure game they had going online. I even tried it out at one point. Yes, that does make four games.

Seems like there are a couple of games based on The Colour of Magic, the one I knew about is from the late 80's for the ZX Spectrum, C64, etc. There was apparently a mobile game too a few years ago.

Also, I mention Companions of Xanth is based off Piers Anthony's novels and and no one notices, someone else does and it kicks off a literary discussion. I see how it is.

Maybe it's chance and time of day... Some people don't' look past the first page of the general discussions.

More like the usual behaviour on forums. People read the first couple posts, skims to the last ones and then comment about something. It's rarer on GOG than on most forums but it happens here too.

So there at least 5-6 games then. Personally, I never saw those last ones you've mentioned.

Sometimes people just miss a detail while skimming through the thread. I didn't realize you had already made that connection until you pointed it out and I went back and looked at your comment carefully.
No disrespect was intended. Promise.

You can download the ZX Spectrum version from World of Spectrum.

Found some screenshots of the mobile version. Apparently they planned to make more mobile games based on Discworld, but this one seems to be the only one they released.

Ditto. Saw the word Xanth, looked at the first comment, then posted my comment...

Honestly i haven't thought of Piers Anthony for years... for the name still to come to me so easily is almost disturbing...

Cool! Thanks for the links! Checking them out now :D

Would still be a great game to be able to get here.