I enjoy Piers Anthony's writing style and characters. This is not my favorite book or series of his but I do still quite enjoy it and I would recommend it. ( )

I haven't read this series in ages, and I forgot a lot of it. It might just be that I was in a cranky mood when I read it this time, but man. For such an engaging story, I really hate the way female characters come across. From an emphasis on their "vanity" that supersedes almost all of their other attributes, to a pretty intense rape scene in a game sequence, it's really not a fun series for the ladies.

I also hate that the women are all lovely and pretty while many of the males are physically unattractive, but they end up together anyway. This wouldn't bug me so much if there were even one plain girl who ended up with a hot guy, but the constant emphasis on how women don't care so much about their mate's appearance while that's all men care about grates on my last nerve.

SIGH. I hate when a good story or well executed tv show or movie or whatever pushes such blatent sexism. I don't expect a perfect artistic world of feminist values, but geez it gets old when all I see are annoying stereotypes. Maybe these books are just suffering by getting caught in my current run of media with lousy female portrayls, but I'm pretty sure I won't be re-reading the last book in this series for a while. ( )

If you are a fan of the series, then for the love of robots and fantasy creatures everywhere, stop after book 3! ( )

Oh, dear. Where to start?

1. The kids are wildly implausible and a little bit irritating. When they're introduced, they're four years old, yet capable of executing masterful escape plots that require them to have extensive skills and knowledge. The only concession to their age is that Nepe talks in an "adorable" mushmouthed fashion, albeit with the same or greater vocabulary and sentence structure as everyone else. And yet both kids' parents mysteriously think their kids are developmentally delayed somehow.

2. Tania has been a classic sociopathic villain up til now, and in fact is the instigator of a really creepy coerced sexual encounter (rape scene #1!) but then she falls in love and is magically transformed into a good, ethical sympathetic person. But she can't have her love, because he's taken, so when she meets another random powerful man, she transfers that affection to him wholesale in about ten seconds. Man, that was a deep and powerful emotion... or something.

3. Yet more Games. Jesus, come on, man. Again, not poorly executed, but the stakes are higher every time and therefore the use of contests seems less and less plausible every time. Also it has officially Gotten Old.

4. The rape scenes. Seriously, the second half of the book is nothing but. Female character forced to tell a rape joke with herself as the victim to a live audience. Absolutely appalling surrogate rape "game." Goblin rape, multiple counts. Threatened child rape. I am not the most fragile flower about this stuff, but this was just gross - and certainly the rampant sexism throughout the series does not earn Anthony any leeway on this topic.

I am glad I finished this reread, because these were books I cared about when I was a kid, but... I'm finished. These aren't going to be taking up space on my shelves any longer. (Yes, there's one more book in the series. It's so bad that I didn't even bother adding it to my collection in the first place. Skip it!) ( )

The first three books in this series were really, very good. Unfortunately, as it continued, less focus and attention was placed on consistency and plotting and more on the bodily and sexual practices of the various characters. Also, the Game, which seemed innovative and meaningful to the story in the beginning, became a lot less intriguing as outcomes from it were used to decide all manner of important situations. Would such powerful people be inclined to utilize such a method for deciding disagreements? It felt more and more unlikely as the stakes got higher. Particularly in this book, I felt the whole thing was just an excuse to play inter-species capture-the-flag and have some main female characters get raped. The latter, especially, I really didn’t approve of. I am sorely tempted not to even read the last book in the series, but I’m such a completist, I can’t really help it. Hopefully it’s more of a return to what attracted me to the series in the first place. ( )