On a Pale Horse

Piers Anthony

I tried. I really did try. Even after attempting the horror that was Xanth, and failing miserably, I still went ahead and gave Incarnations of Immortality the good old college try. I mean, the premise is irresistible-- seven novels, each based on one of the seven immortals. The plot here is a clever one, and from the outset Anthony shows that he's a very shrewd worldbuilder; when Death comes for a young man contemplating suicide, said young man instinctively shoots Death instead, and thus is called to assume the office. We see various aspects of Anthony's cleverly-constructed world through the eyes of a character who must travel all around it, looking at it through, as it were, new eyes. This is great stuff, and a moderately competent writer could turn it into pure gold.

Piers Anthony, however, is not a moderately competent writer. While the florid language that made A Spell for Chameleon such unreadable dreck is toned down some here, there's still way too much of it per paragraph to make this book anything but a trial to read. As well, his characters-- most of whom, more's the pity, seem as if they're quite well-drawn-- converse as if they couldn't possibly be less interested in the world around them. This is definitely not the attitude one wants one's main character to take when said main character is learning the ropes of one of eternity's most important jobs, is it?

Where abandoning Xanth was a relief, with Incarnations of Immortality, it's frustrating, because it's obvious there's more potential in any given aspect of this book's existence than there is in, say, Tom Clancy's entire corpus. Piers Anthony, however, was exactly the wrong writer to attempt to pull it off.