Oops. That was me meme.

Meme? Who is "meme"? I'm sure they're just talking in all caps because they are very angry. Box_in_the_box just does that to people!

TBF, we they all started on him independently!

Well (and I realize the irony here), he shouldn't have gone non-anon in the first place. But then he is completely used to telling his kinks to anyone, anytime, so I bet overshare's a hard habit to break.

Ahahahaha, so I was looking through watchmenkink to pass the time, and got to this Rorschach/Laurie fic and who else but Box_in_the_box is bawwwing about how he got trolled there?

Ahahaha, maybe I shouldn't post this on FW. It would probably look like grudgewank!

Now he has two things to talk to people about! We did him a favour!

Oh, oh dear. I vaguely recall the Incarnations of Immortality as being some of Piers Anthony's better series, but this is from the lens of someone who only realized the Xanth series sucked around book 9 (and still kept buying/reading them for about 6 books after, making excuses of "it's the new editor's fault" before realizing it was the author all along). Also, almost 20 books have come out since I gave up on Xanth. I cannot imagine how much they must suck.

Anyway. I remember Pale Horse very fondly, but I haven't read it in about 15 years, and don't remember the female descriptive parts at all. (Except recalling there's a bit where Satan tempts him by offering him sexy naked women, and slaps one girl's thigh or ass to show it jiggles and/or is all muscle, I can't remember now. I think that's in Pale Horse. Might be a different book.) It does handle the job of Death very well, although its theology is somewhat bothersome. (I don't believe in original sin, this book does.)

Regarding the rest of the books - Time and Fate are excellent. (Fate's female characters have excellent motivations, I believe they are a bit male-focused, but they do pass the Bechdel test most of the time.) War is very good, though the singing-to-deal-with-stuttering character is a silly plot, on reflection.

But I can't abide the series from Nature onwards. Nature annoys me for multiple reasons, though part of it is very personally biased - I was at the height of my Marysueing adolescent years, and that was the first book to come out after I'd started writing plots for the characters in my head. I'd thought about having Satan come in as a human to tempt a character or two, and debated his name being Natas before disregarding it as a silly trick no real author would do. What do we have in the Nature book but a male character named Natasha with a boy-named-Sue complex. Ha ha ha shut up. Also, the female main character is really idiotic. I hate shouting at main characters to stop being so stupid.

The Satan book -- I can't remember why I disliked it, now, since the "just misunderstood" type has always pushed my buttons. I do remember I hated the ending, at least. And the God book is awful on every level imaginable, especially dealing with sex and female characters and race and I forget what else. There's a part with a rapist with a virgin/whore complex who's stymied by a girl wearing white stockings because hey no visible vagina I swear oh god that book sucks so bad

Anyway, if you can get through Pale Horse ok, go on till at least Bearing a Red Sword. After that it's up to you. The books themselves are probably a bit more tolerable written-wise than in audio form. The Pale Horse GN, on the other hand, is absolutely gorgeous, painted art, marvelous covers, plus no annoying character descriptions. Unfortunately the publisher is long out of business and it's almost impossible to find copies of. (I tried tracking it down when I had to replace my comic collection 10 years ago after a fire. Think I got 3 out of 4 issues -- IIRC the company went out of business one issue into the Time book, could be wrong.)

Ah. Then I really did miss out on the GN.

Thanks for your comment! So the other books are all about how different people take over the Fate or Time positions? That might be cool. I think I will finish On a Pale Horse. And maybe one other after that, but if it only get worse... :\ well, there's always something else to read.

I'd thought about having Satan come in as a human to tempt a character or two, and debated his name being Natas before disregarding it as a silly trick no real author would do. What do we have in the Nature book but a male character named Natasha with a boy-named-Sue complex.

Now that's funny. :D:

Yeah, the series is all about the other Incarnations -- I forget how many Zane meets in his story (probably most of them) -- and how they get into their roles, and the connections between them, etc. But like I said, it's been a damn long time since I read the books, and most of them I read before I was old enough to realize what Anthony was actually saying, as Sep said, so I may be misremembering the early books' quality. Feel free to drop them at any time if they deserve it. :D

I think the GN might be available in scanned format somewhere on the internet. I've seen Innovation's adaptations of Terry Pratchett's early books out there, so it's possible. So far I've only found the covers and the knowledge that it was supposed to be six issue and it was the last one that was never printed...

oh sweet! Issue 1 and 3. Dunno if the rest is out there yet...

oooh, ty!

I admit I keep getting too curious about the plot to stop reading. He writes toooo slooooowww. This is why I have a bad habit of reading plot synopsys off of Wikipedia while watching movies/taking a break from a book/comic book. The Internet has utterly ruined my patience for everything!

I vaguely recall the Incarnations of Immortality as being some of Piers Anthony's better series, but this is from the lens of someone who only realized the Xanth series sucked around book 9 (and still kept buying/reading them for about 6 books after, making excuses of "it's the new editor's fault" before realizing it was the author all along).

Yeah, for Xanth, I've read up through... Man From Mundania, I think. The first four or so are okay. I also remember the first three Blue Adept books being okay. It's difficult to say, though: my later Piers Anthony reading experiences tended to color my views of the earlier books. Certain features that bugged me (but I could skim past) got stronger in later books, at which point I could no longer ignore them in earlier books.

As for Incarnations of Immortality, I recall the whole series being fairly bad on the sexism front. I remember OaPH as being the best of the lot... and And Eternity being, um, inexcusable in every way, shape, and form. It's why I stopped reading Piers Anthony entirely, actually.

I remember that I didn't think that the timeline worked in Bearing an Hourglass. I remember liking With a Tangled Skein.

And the God book is awful on every level imaginable, especially dealing with sex and female characters and race and I forget what else. There's a part with a rapist with a virgin/whore complex who's stymied by a girl wearing white stockings because hey no visible vagina I swear oh god that book sucks so bad

Yes. So true. Not to mention the underage sex, and the scene where we are once again bashed over the head with how women cannot comprehend the male sex drive. In fact, if we were to experience it for just one moment, we would rape everyone we saw. (I can't imagine why I would think this is Piers Anthony's personal philosophy, but it certainly showed up in several books.)

Have I ever mentioned how I hate And Eternity?

(Good heavens: there's apparently an 8th book. According to the description, the main character (female) is a prostitute. This shocks me not at all.)

I know I definitely read up to Isle of View. That one... oh god, the teenage wedding? I was already irritated with the "Adult Conspiracy" and the focus on panties that seemed to be the only damn thing in the books by that point -- ok, yes, the early books did have sex as a big focus, but at least it wasn't a giggly creepy thing that children were begging to find out about, right? The books seemed to be getting less mature as I was getting older, and getting bad in all sorts of ways I could no longer ignore.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who intensely hated AE. There are just no words for it. BTW, did you also have a hard time finishing the last Adept book in the second series? What the flaming fuck, did that turn into a pile of crap or was it already there? I think it was that book, and IoV, and And Eternity</i>, and Mercycle all coming out within a year or two of each other that made me run screaming. By the time I was 18 I'd moved my Anthony collection to the back of my bookshelf and didn't even glance at new books in shops anymore. And reading the plots on wikipedia makes me all kinds of glad that I left off when I did.

...yeah, that Nox book doesn't look at all good. Considering I don't even remember her from the rest of the Incarnations books -- quick wiki scan says she was part of the plot of AE. Oh joy.


Certain features that bugged me (but I could skim past) got stronger in later books, at which point I could no longer ignore them in earlier books.

This is what also happened to me with Chris Claremont. I can't read any of his so-called "good" X-Men issues now because of the crap of his later work. Sad, isn't it?

the focus on panties that seemed to be the only damn thing in the books by that point

I remember that unfortunately clearly. It's not that the panties thing wasn't always there, but it just kept getting worse.

BTW, did you also have a hard time finishing the last Adept book in the second series?

I never read that one.

These were coming out back when I was in junior high and high school. We lived in a relatively small town then, with a not-very-good library system (how quickly I learned to miss the Denver libraries!). The library had certain Piers Anthony books (like, say, the first Blue Adept trilogy, collected in some omnibus) and not others (like, say, the second).

The used bookstore had them, but I had a pretty limited books budget (and, besides, I had to acquire all of the David Eddings books in hardcover! It was essential! ...I wasn't known for having good taste, really).

Then And Eternity came out, which I actually bought, since I had the rest of the series. That was pretty much it for me.

...yeah, that Nox book doesn't look at all good. Considering I don't even remember her from the rest of the Incarnations books -- quick wiki scan says she was part of the plot of AE. Oh joy.

You know it's got to be horrible when reviewers who *like* And Eternity claim that the new one is all sex all the time and lots of creepy pedophilia.

This is a large part of why I read almost entirely female authors. They're certainly not flawless, but they seldom have the same sorts of problems.

Piers Anthony was always good at coming up with creative settings and ideas. It's just what he did with them that was the problem. :/ I still have a great deal of fondness for On A Pale Horse, because the concept behind it was so creative, and it has the fewest issues in the series.

Sad, isn't it?

It is; it's also not uncommon. I'm not in comics fandom, so I was pretty unfamiliar with Frank Miller before Sin City came out, and I quite liked the movie. Now I'm somewhat more familiar with Frank Miller, and those creepy elements that bugged me but didn't stand out... stand out enough that I don't like the movie anymore. The cars are still damned cool.

I have never been able to finish a Piers Anthony. He's skeevy and sexist, and like most humorous SF/F authors of his generation, isn't actually funny.

I liked him until I got old enough to realize what he was actually saying.

This is why I haven't reread any Crichton books. Keep the dream alive!

Oh, so he was trying to be funny. I thought he might be at some parts, but figured he had made some mistake.

If you have the key for Diablo II, you can download it off the Blizzard website.

That is some delicious wank, definitely FW worthy.

I downloaded it from the interwebs, so I don't have a key :(((

Good! I might write it up in the morning.