David G. Hartwell, Editor, Julie Brady, Author, Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $24.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-312-86461-3
Gathering a stellar array of 22 SF stories penned by either native Canadians or writers who simply prefer to publish there, this is a worthy companion volume to Northern Stars (1994). Wesley Herbert displays a compelling cyberpunk sensibility in ""Tw
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Piers Anthony, Author Putnam Publishing Group $19.95 (300p) ISBN 978-0-399-13893-5
Despite some fresh characters and situations, the uneven third installment of Anthony's new series (after Virtual Mode and Fractal Mode ) ultimately lapses into formula. Escaping an unhappy childhood, 14-year-old Colene has discovered travel on the...
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $17.95 (311p) ISBN 978-0-312-93213-8
In the other volumes of this series, hero Kelvin Knight Hackleberry had finished ``Ridding his Country of a Sore'' and ``Joining Two,'' so he is now ready for ``then Uniting Four,'' the next line of the prophecy. Unfortunately, the authors seem to...
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Piers Anthony, Author Putnam Publishing Group $18.95 (303p) ISBN 978-0-399-13529-3
In the first trilogy of Antony's Apprentice Adept series, the heroes Stile and the Blue Adept separate the overlapping worlds of Phaze and Proton to prevent them from destroying each other. In the second trilogy their sons recombine the worlds to...
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Piers Anthony, Author William Morrow & Company $18.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-688-09705-9
Using the same Florida setting as his horror novel Shade of the Tree , Anthony here conjures up a nightmarish creature who stalks humans through sexual attraction and leaves them grotesquely sucked dry of their protoplasm. When bodies reduced to...
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Piers Anthony, Author William Morrow & Company $22 (522p) ISBN 978-0-688-10140-4
Anthony, best known for his science fiction (the Xanth series), has based this overburdened saga on early 16th-century artifacts found in an actual North Florida Indian burial mound. Combining myth, fantasy and history, this wide-ranging, picaresque
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Piers Anthony, Author Putnam Publishing Group $18.95 (302p) ISBN 978-0-399-13649-8
In the world created by the veteran SF author for his Mode series, of which this is the second volume, five people are needed as anchor points to define a stable skew path across parallel universes. When Colone, Darius, Sequiro and Provos are cast...
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $21.95 (318p) ISBN 978-0-312-85390-7
With this fairly predictable but nevertheless amusing tale, Anthony ( Alien Plot ) returns to the magical world of Xanth, a place where ``appearance counts for most of reality'' and nearly everyone has some magical talent, even if it is only the...
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $18.95 (255p) ISBN 978-0-312-85394-5
Known primarily for his novels, Anthony ( Macroscope ) here collects short stories written over a span of 35 years; many are previously unpublished, and original to this volume. For the most part, they are top-notch efforts. ``December Dates'' is a...
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Piers Anthony, Author Putnam Publishing Group $19.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-399-13781-5
Not so much a novel as a series of situational puzzles, this stand-alone book by the bestselling author of the Xanth series features two characters who play a computer-generated virtual reality game called Killobyte. Walter Toland, an incapacitated...
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Piers Anthony, Author Ace Books $7.99 (344p) ISBN 978-0-441-25126-1
Veteran SF author Anthony's second entry in his Mode Series finds four travelers between parallel universes rescued by a woman who needs their help in overthrowing her world's despotic rulers. (Dec.)
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $23.95 (448p) ISBN 978-0-312-85564-2
Anthony (the Xanth series) overreaches with this ambitious but clumsy pro-environmental ``message'' novel. Interconnected vignettes trace the progress of a man and a woman, Blaze and Ember, through repeated reincarnations at different points in...
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Piers Anthony, Author . Tor $25.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-87464-3
In this autobiographical sequel to 1988's Bio of an Ogre, Anthony tacitly and emphatically acknowledges that his readers mean more to him than critics, publishers or editors. Anthony, a renowned fantasy writer, creator of the Xanth series,...
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $23.95 (380p) ISBN 978-0-312-85811-7
That Anthony has attempted to write a multicultural work is laudable, if bemusing. Yet Anthony clearly cares about this book and, as in Isle of Women, the first volume in this series, imbues its serious, ambitious text with the frenetic action and...
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $22.95 (120p) ISBN 978-0-312-85391-4
This newest entry in the Xanth series should delight Anthony's (Harpy Thyme) many fans while drawing the usual groans from pun-hating others. Gargoyle Gary Gar, hereditary guardian and purifier of the waters of the Swan Knee River flowing from...
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $23.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-312-85392-1
The 19th novel in this lighthearted series, popular for its puns and its innocent naughtiness, is again set in the fantasy land of Xanth (Demons Don't Dream ). Here, Anthony tells the story of the Demoness Metria and her other selves, the crazy D....
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $23.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-312-86227-5
Devotees of Xanth, Anthony's engaging fictional realm, will applaud his latest pun-filled entry in the series. Anthony incorporated about 150 suggestions from fans in Roc and a Hard Place (1995); he uses--and credits--another 100 here, including two
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $24.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-312-86340-1
With this third volume of his Geodyssey series, Anthony develops an intriguing ecological perspective on human evolution as he traces one human family's rebirth throughout history in locales ranging from prehistoric Africa's Great Rift Valley to the
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $23.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-86162-9
As is customary in his Xanth series (of which this is the 21st installment, following Yon Ill Wind, 1996), Anthony once again pours on the puns as he works a multitude of readers' ""notions,"" suggested to him by mail, into the plot. Forrest Faun is
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Piers Anthony, Author Pulpless.com $19.95 (208p) ISBN 978-1-58445-000-9
In the second Anthony novel due out in May (see Muse of Art, reviewed above), an elderly couple, Penn and Chandelle, rent an expensively furnished house in Philadelphia for a vacation getaway. It turns out that the building is not only luxurious but
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $24.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-86691-4
The newest volume in Anthony's most popular series (Zombie Lover, etc.) is for truly dedicated Xanthropologists only--for it's filled not only with horrendous puns but with a maze of references to past books in the saga. When an environmental...
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Piers Anthony. Open Road, $14.99 trade paper (292p) ISBN 978-1-5040-3877-5
Anthony’s 41st Xanth novel is aimless, juvenile, and degrading. A new villain has appeared in the magical land of Xanth, where puns abound. This “Ghost Writer in the Sky” is in fact a hack author from Mundania (aka our world) who is testing his...
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $23.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-86690-7
A brassy 15-year-old, Breanna, stars in this cheeky new installment in Anthony's popular series about Xanth (Faun & Games, 1997, etc.), a quirky magical realm where everything is taken literally. Since she spent most of her life in Mundania, Breanna
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Bestseller Anthony packs his fourth and concluding volume set in the Mode multiverse (Virtual Mode; etc.) with a huge variety of characters, a brisk, episodic plot, plenty of sex and some superficial emotional heft. A trio of cat-based androids...
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Piers Anthony, Author . Tor $24.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-86906-9
"Do you think the puns will ever run out?" a character asks early in Anthony's 26th funny Xanth adventure. "If they do, Xanth will dissolve into chaos... It is mostly made of puns," another character sagely replies. And so it...
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Piers Anthony, Author . Tor $24.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-86904-5
Profusely punning his path through his 26th Xanth fantasy, the prolific Anthony (The Dastard, etc.) focuses on a contest between Demon Jupiter and Demon Fornax, reviving to great effect the dueling demons theme from last year's Swell Foop....
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Piers Anthony, Author . Tor $24.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-7653-0407-0
Panty puns and intermittently droll word-play drive veteran Anthony's 28th Xanth book (Cube Route
, etc.), the first of a second magic trilogy within this popular fantasy series. Since the author always pays such close attention to what his...
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Piers Anthony, Author . Tor $24.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-7653-0409-4
At the start of Anthony's routine 30th Xanth novel, Stymy Stork refuses to deliver Surprise Golem's baby, because Surprise is too young, per the dictates of the Adult Conspiracy. After the stork flies off with his bundle, Surprise, the two...
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Piers Anthony, Author . Tor $24.95 (316p) ISBN 978-0-7653-0410-0
In this meandering 31st Xanth novel, Hugo, son of the Gorgon and Good Magician Humfrey, vanishes from his cellar, where the body of a murdered man just as suddenly appears. What's worse, Humfrey's book of answers has been scrambled, and...
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Piers Anthony, Author . Tor $27.99 (446p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2353-8
Anthony's fifth Geodyssey novel (after 1999's Muse of Art
) covers approximately 100,000 years of human evolution, moving at the speed of the glaciers he frequently describes. In between lectures on the development of human bodies and...
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Piers Anthony, Author Ace Books $5.99 (0p) ISBN 978-0-441-52562-1
It is difficult to understand how so slight a book can make for such tedious reading. The prolific Anthony's ( Virtual Mode ) latest novel is about a group of humans bicycling along the ocean floor. Anthony does try to provide a framework for the...
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Piers Anthony, Author William Morrow & Company $15.95 (369p) ISBN 978-0-688-08688-6
With this seventh book Anthony concludes his series called the Incarnations of Immortality. Previous works have focused on Death, Time, Fate, War, Earth, Evil; the subject here is the Incarnation of Good, and the setting is an alternate Earth where...
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $26.95 (448p) ISBN 978-0-312-86896-3
The fourth volume of the Geodyssey series explores the evolution and history of our species from the distant past (500,000 years ago) to the near future by examining the use of such diverse (and dubious) arts as curiosity, healing, story, expression,
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $14.95 (279p) ISBN 978-0-312-93272-5
Anthony's latest novel is one of his most minor efforts, a mechanical working out of an absurd, rattletrap plot, overwhelmed by talk and introspection. The story is set in a future in which a law has been passed (the Miscegenation Act) forbidding...
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Piers Anthony, Author William Morrow & Company $16.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-688-05209-6
In 1966, the late Philip K. Dick published the novelette ``We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.'' A movie based on the story will be released next year; this book is a novelization of the script and the original novel. The first half of the book...
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Piers Anthony, Author Putnam Publishing Group $16.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-399-13661-0
Darius, a Cyng of Hlahtar, has traveled to earth in order to meet his true love, a suicidal teen named Colene, and bring her back to his universe. But in proving to her that other worlds exist, Darius uses up the power of the artifact that would...
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $19.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-85389-1
This latest and weakest Xanth fantasy (after The Color of Her Panties ) starts off in Mundania, the series's term for the world in which the readers live. Playing the new fantasy/adventure computer game Companions of Xanth, teenagers Dug and Kim...
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Piers Anthony, Author Putnam Publishing Group $16.95 (286p) ISBN 978-0-399-13359-6
Anthony's Apprentice Adept series takes place on a world inhabited simultaneously by two separate spheres of being: the science fictional Proton's technological Earth colonists and the fantasy Phaze's magical natives including dragons, demons and...
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $24.95 (332p) ISBN 978-0-7653-0408-7
Anthony's entertaining, if somewhat uneven, 29th Xanth book (after 2004's Currant Events) follows the polite, generous and even-tempered Goody Goblin-an anomaly among males of his race, who are usually crass, unkind and violent-as Goody tours Xanth...
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Piers Anthony, Author Tor Books $24.95 (303p) ISBN 978-0-312-86900-7
From the densely populated imagination of Anthony (Xone of Contention) comes yet another pun and reader-suggestions-laden tale of Xanth. Many familiar characters make their appearance in this slowly unwinding yarn about the eponymous boy, self-named
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Piers Anthony, Author, Robert E. Margroff, With Tor Books $18.95 (310p) ISBN 978-0-312-85305-1
In this conclusion to the series begun four books ago with Dragon's Gold , the battle between the forces of evil, led by malignant witch Zady, and the forces of good, headed by benign witch Helbah, once again endangers the world of the Alliance,...
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Piers Anthony, Author, Robert E. Margroff, With Tor Books $18.95 (280p) ISBN 978-0-312-85107-1
A vast improvement over its predecessor, Chimaera's Copper , this fourth book in the Roundear Prophecy series commands an enjoyable, multilevel plot and some interesting character development. Zady, a witch vowing revenge for the killing of her evil
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Piers Anthony, Author, Patrick Woodroffe, Illustrator Underwood-Miller $24.95 (197p) ISBN 978-0-88733-069-8
Sometime in the near future, a lonely boy named Thor becomes attached to a genetics project named Balook. Born from reconstructed genes, Balook is a Baluchitherium , one of the largest land mammals of prehistoric times. When puberty hits Thor and...
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Piers Anthony, Author, Alan Riggs, Editor Tor Books $18.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-85413-3
In February 1989, science fiction writer Anthony, author of the Xanth series, received a moving letter. It came from a woman whose daughter, Jenny, was in a coma as a result of severe injuries caused by a drunk driver. She asked Anthony to write to...
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Piers Anthony, Author, Alfred Tella, With Tor Books $22.95 (287p) ISBN 978-0-312-86266-4
Bestselling fantasist Anthony (Yon Ill Wind) collaborates with the lesser-known Tella (Sundered Soul, 1990) to cook up a tale of light eroticism and occult adventure inspired by mythic Indian tales including the Ramayana. Mohini, the beautiful...
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Piers Anthony, Author, James Richey, Author, Alan Riggs, Joint Author Tor Books $25.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-312-86409-5
With the death of her mentor, A'mond, the young elf Chentelle is the sole enchantress in Lone Valley. So when a message from the High Bishop arrives for A'mond, Chentelle accepts it in his place. Following orders, she sets off for the cave of A'stoc,
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Piers Anthony, Author, Jo Anne Taeusch, Joint Author Tor Books $22.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-312-86464-4
Best known for his pun-filled, long-running Xanth light fantasy series, Anthony pairs here with a fan and first-time author for a stand-alone novel of improbable plot and lackluster characters. Vegan Herb Moss, a member of a race of genetically...
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Piers Anthony, Author, Ron Leming, Joint Author Tor Books $23.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-86463-7
Anthony's collaborations with unknowns (Dream a Little Dream, etc.) have a mixed record, but this latest effort is notably successful. The novel draws on Leming's background as a Texas blues musician, by flipping its hero, blues guitarist Slim...
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Piers Anthony, Author, Philip Jose Farmer, Author, P. Anthony, Author Ace Books $18.95 (264p) ISBN 978-0-441-09488-2
A tiresome performance by two genre talents who surely can do better, this is the old space opera story whereby a brave individual from earth manages to outwit an entire race of superior beings, get the girl and save the galaxy. Jack is an...
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Piers Anthony, Author, Robert Kornwise, With Underwood-Miller $25 (0p) ISBN 978-0-88733-071-1
This is a better than average fantasy begun by Kornwise, then completed by Anthony ( Xanth ) after Kornwise's death. In spite of the enforced one-sidedness of the collaboration, the writing is skillful and seamless; in large part because Anthony was
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Piers Anthony, Author, Val Lindhan, Illustrator, Ron Lindhan, Illustrator Tafford Publishing, Incorporated $19.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-9623712-6-4
According to the author's note, Mer-Cycle was written in 1971 but remained unsold until now. It might better have stayed in oblivion. The plot postulates a series of parallel earths, each due to be struck by a meteor that will destroy it. A planet...
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Piers Anthony, Author, Launius Anthony, Author, Mercedes Lackey, With Baen Books $20 (398p) ISBN 978-0-671-72175-6
This clumsy collaboration between Anthony (the Xanth novels) and Lackey (the Heralds of Valdemar series) is a wasted effort. In the militaristic matriarchy of Mazonia, only women can use magic and men are slaves. Xylina, an impoverished orphan,...
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Piers Anthony, Author, Julie Brady, Author, Julie Brady, Joint Author Tor Books $23.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-86466-8
Bestselling fantasist Anthony teams up with another first-time author (as he did in Quest for the Fallen Star, Forecasts, June 8) for this story of a fairy tale world called Kafka, born of the dreams of humans known as ""Creators."" Nola is one of...
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