This page is the third set of notes on books by P. A. D. Jacob, documenting books written (or published) after How Precious Was That While. For those published and documented during what is covered in How Precious Was That While see Part 2. See the Part 1 web page for stories referenced in BiOgre. Some series with books not completed at the time How Precious Was That While was written, but later finished, may be on the previous page instead of here. Book order will follow the same basic chronological order principle as the first. The order may be rearranged as I learn more about writing and printing order. However, this period is more difficult to identify when a final draft ends and when first publication begins.
It's hard to say, but once Anthony's big novel writing sprint of every 2-3 months settled down, he seemed to become interested in reading magazines and books, and watching movies, as respite between writing books. He also seemed to return to story writing, no longer focusing on novel sales. There's already dozens of stories (he said only 1 in 4 were sold in the 1960s) that are unsold, as well as untold number of stories in obscure magazines and collections, both from the 1960s, and that started after the turn of the century/millenium, that may never be collected as they were in the printed Anthonology and Alien Plot. This is a shame. I guess I can complain more when I've exhausted the available printed works, noted here. As you'll observe from this page, I'm getting closer. This page is a work in progress as I continue reading Anthony.
This part 3 looks at what might be called the newsletter period, where saucy stories with more uninhibited sexual content became more common as he broke from editorial control, experimented with his own publishing, and returned to shorter story works. It also begins with electronic publication. I don't know how many newsletters existed before 1997 (as the February 1997 newsletter and before never were posted on the web on HiPiers). My guess is the newsletters started when HiPiers started. This period also starts seeing a slow down in publishers wanting his writing, and dealing with unpublished books again as he started to finish novels which summaries had been rejected. The inclusion of Volk here, because it was first published on the web with Pulpless in 1996, even though it was finished in 1991, and only made print in 1999 with Xlibris. I had intended to link newsletters, but these become suddenly non-existent. Check the Internet Archive wayback machine dated Spring 2023, and in some places earlier as things start to disappear. Considering MaryLee's use of Wordpress, I suspect that she started a conversion for the Hi Piers website and links and pages started breaking as the old was not preserved. (This is a tricky thing, requiring standardized server messages for redirects and displacements.) Ultimately, hipiers.com was abandoned, and has been replaced at hipiers.net, and the newsletter archive has finally reappeared after being gone for over 2 years, but no longer linkable (as far as I can tell) to individual editions.
This article is intended to be read from top to bottom. However, because this article is also intended to enable an author-oriented reading order, it is not unexpected that this web page will be used as a reference. This table of contents links the books (not the stories).
Volk was originally started in August 1980, written in hospital while being diagnosed with cat scratch disease, but Anthony was unable to get a sale based on the initial chapters (there were two) and summary, apparently because it wasn't his typical fantasy. See the Viscous Circle and Fractal Mode author's notes, as well as discussions in Bio of an Ogre (BiOgre).
In 1990, with the additional successes of his other novels, he decided to finish the book, and did so in 1991. However, it remained unpublished until his investments with Pulpless and Xlibris. I believe it was the first book he published with either of them, Volk going to Pulpless in 1996. I read the 1999 corrected Xlibris hardcover. I tried reading the Open Road Media mobi format from Amazon, but it had unindented paragraphs (a problem I also had with Eroma) to the point it was too frustrating to read. The Xlibris hardcover is far nicer. Make sure to get a review copy before licensing the ebook in case Amazon hasn't fixed it, otherwise it's not worth the purchase. The Xlibris hardcover was nicely done and is recommended.
Volk is based on Anthony's parent's experience in Spain as Quakers volunteering for peace service during World War II. The story is about a Quaker woman who does the same, then falls in love with a German officer. She is later captured by the Germans and the officer tries to save her. I enjoyed some of the lesser known history (not only the Japanese internment camps, but the US also had prisoner camps for captured German POWs that they killed, not DEFs as claimed), and the slightly odd Quaker English (plain speech, also found in Anthony's Apprentice Adept series) that isn't quite the same as that which we read in Shakespeare and the King James Bible.
I read the Tor October 1997 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. It was finished approximately March of 1996. Faun & Games is Xanth #21, the last of the Tor Xanth books that print the beautiful color map of Xanth, which is far more readable than the black and white expanded print-on-a-page. The sequel is Zombie Lover. Faun & Games represents the move from Microsoft DOS on an i486 to Windows 95 on a Pentium, both with Microsoft Word (DOS to Windows version).
A whole new collections of worlds orbits Princess Ida's head. A faun befriends a tree, and goes to the Good Magician Humphrey to find a way to save it. He must go to Ida's worlds. He has started to remember beyond his day's tryst, enabled by the tree's nymph. The opening exploring the existence of a faun, the very near skirting of the adult conspiracy with daily trysts described as celebrating, was both hilarious and fun, and then gets serious as the friendship between faun and nymph develops. A fun story with more Xanth to explore.
I read the May 1997 Tor first edition hardcover, with jacket art by Tristan Elwell. This is book #3 in the Geodyssey series. The sequel is Muse of Art. Hope of Earth was written about the same time as Yon Ill Wind, during the transition from his i486 with the Sprint word processor on Microsoft DOS, then Microsoft Word, then to a Pentium with Microsoft Word with Windows 95.
Hope of Earth fits into my category of Anthony favorites. It is my favorite of the series, and apparently is also Anthony's favorite of the series. One might think that writing the same novel over and over, starting in ancient pre-human pre-history and ending in the near future, exploring the environmental impacts of human exponential growth, would soon get dull and boring, but the different places in archeological and evolutionary past, and historical places of the known human past, with different character streams and interactions, hits its pinnacle with this novel. Each book in Geodyssey improves the flow and academic foundations from the previous, sometimes refining previous ideas, but not repeating them. Anthony also hired a researcher for this series (originally for Tatham Mound?), so a lot has gone into it, not only Anthony's whim of how he sees the world.
According to the November 2010 newsletter, it is likely that Otzi didn't freeze to death, nor was he killed where he was at least, after all, but was buried there after dying elsewhere. The February 2012 newsletter notes he'd eaten goat and bread just before his death, so Anthony was hopeful his version of events still might hold. The March 2015 newsletter notes confirmation he was shot in the back, likely while eating. The August 2018 newsletter has more from New Scientist on Otzi. He was apparently being pursued and led the pursuers away from him, sharpening weapons that constantly dulled and not getting back to more in time.
I read the Tor July 2001 first edition hardcover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The illustrator is the same for Bio of an Ogre (referenced in the book as BiOgre) and the relationship between the art shows. How Precious Was That While was written sometime after Quest For The Fallen Star was completed, (the last of the five collaborations that was published by Tor, using Xanth to push them through to publication. It wasn't until J. R. Rain that he did new collaborations).
This is a memoir. It is stand alone, does have some clarifications to BiOgre, and does not run chronologically similar, more or less, to BiOgre. How Precious Was That While is both a sequel and a stand alone book that references BiOgre for more detail. BiOgre goes to the author's age of fifty in August 1985. How Precious Was That While has a reprise chapter of the first book, and then reflects on different periods to age sixty in August 1995 and one hundred novels. As with BiOgre, there are additions since, which brings the book to 1996, presumably added in the submission draft (assuming there was one, or at least additions), and in the galleys (such as the note on HiPiers, other than the website, shutting down). Where BiOgre took 2-3 years to get published, How Precious Was That While took twice as long.
Alas, publishers don't seem to be keen on his autobiographies, and it is with difficulty that he is able to publish them. Who knows if there will be further follow ups. As he indicated in the author's note in On a Pale Horse, they are a kind of sequel to BiOgre, and now How Precious Was That While. His newsletters should probably be included in that, though the first initial ones were never published online.
He is much more open with this memoir than the first, nor does he hold back in mentioning by name the swine (as he nicknamed them in BiOgre) he encounters. Some names are still kept out for safety or privacy. The advice and experience to new authors that is found in BiOgre is updated and elaborated on in detail. It also marks the point where he goes from more meaningful fiction in his 40s and 50s to writing for himself into his 60s and beyond.
The move to Linux as an operating system (OS) is mentioned, though some personal correspondance indicates that he's had similar issues as with other OSes. Unfortunately, GNU and Unix were written with programmers in mind, even though some of the first commercial uses of Unix was for printing and typography. I remember attending ConDuit in Salt Lake City, long before the ComiCon craze came (and with what became FanX washed out ConDuit in the overlapping year or two), and I attended the writer's seminars with my early Toshiba laptops running Slackware and they thought I was crazy. It was fun watching Anthony do the same, though I suppose that came later than this memoir. Those who saw computing before Microsoft's dominance, and Apple's prevalence over other competitors, have far easier transitioning to other computing platforms.
My own journey with word processing also began on the Atari 8-bit with Atari Writer, switching from my Royal manual typewriters (I still have one), though I've always preferred the Qwerty keyboard layout, not being convinced that Dvorak is actually faster or easier. I switched to an IBM Portable 5155 with WordPerfect 4.2 and DOS 3.3 after that, and used WordPerfect until its Linux native version with version 8. I switched to AbiWord and StarOffice 3 (now OpenOffice and Libre Office) after that, but have always found Troff and TeX to be equally useful. As Anthony has noted, KDE also has a word processor.
I read the Tor October 1998 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. It was finished approximately March 1997. This is Xanth #22. It's sequel is Xone of Contention.
The cover fits the story, but I agree with Anthony's criticism of it: why is Breanna of the Black Wave not black? (She kind of is if you look closely, but not at first glance.)
No-nonsense Breanna doesn't think she's prejudiced against zombies until she catches herself in a statement that she wouldn't want to marry one. Then she encounters the decomposing King Xeth and falls prey to a love potion.
On a separate note, this is about the time the web-based newsletters begin (and the final print letter) in May 1997. I imagine this is an artifact of the looming shut down of other parts of HIPIERS, beginning with the phone number. After reading this novel is actually a good place to start reading those newsletters.
I read the Tor May 1999 first edition hardcover, with jacket art by Tristan Elwell. This is book four in the Geodyssey series, and the first after the originally planned trilogy, a sequel (though not dependent on) Hope of Earth. It's sequel is Climate of Change.
For me Muse of Art had ups and downs. I like a saucy story from time to time, like I imagine most people do, but Anthony can get destracted with sex in his stories, especially around this time of writing, and though sometimes it's fun, sometimes it just becomes too much, overwhelming the story. This one was border line, but ultimately worked out in the end. There was a fascinating North Italian Celts story, one of the highlights for me, seeing early Rome before its dominance. An excellent story in Stalingrad, showing another aspect of the war between Germany and Stalingrad Russia, reminded me (in a way) of the movie Enemy at the Gates.
These novels are a remnant of the previous century (millenia). The final, futuristic stories are starting to become dated (with the exception of the fifth novel). In this case, it is literally dated with a plausable enough future scenario in 2024. Thankfully, concerns in the first four books have not reached fruition, though they all remain possibilities to me.
Muse of Art is mentioned in the May 1997 HiPiers newsletter as being rejected by Tor, after their attempt to market the series as dark fantasy, perhaps after the somewhat mystical element of the plot device of the series, which carries characters from one time to the next, and perhaps after the fact that there's always a science fiction story ending. The sequel, Climate of Change, was approaching completion, at 112,000 words, when the first draft was halted. The last few stories were to be completed a decade later, but alas without Alan Riggs for historical research. You'd think, being so close to completion, that he would have finished the novel and tried to market it elsewhere, along with Muse of Art. Instead, Muse of Art was wrapped up into the next Xanth contract (see the July 1998 newsletter).
I read the Tor October 1999 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. This was finished approximately January 1998. This is Xanth #23. The sequel is The Dastard.
A couple years previous, Anthony got ahead of himself with writing Xanth novels, due to juggling other projects, and Tor decided to publish once a year in October, and then stated they wanted no other novels from Anthony but Xanth. This led to a law suit to get five collaborations published. With each new contract, Xanth has been used to get some of Anthony's other books published, such as series that had been cut short (such as Geodessy with Muse of Art (the fourth volume) and much later Climate of Change). It may have been the beginning of the end for Anthony with Tor as about this time is when his Xlibris books were coming into print (for some, e.g. Volk and Reality Check, these were corrected editions) after the demise of Pulpless. Xone of Contention is the book where Anthony claimed that he had a novel published with a title starting with every letter of the English alphabet.
The green house effect is about to destroy Xanth, the result of an epic battle between the demons X(an)th and E(a/r)th. Our heroes must travel to ancient Xanth to identify the source of the magic... errr effect... errr something that makes the trees want to die. It makes sense when you read it. :) This is one of those Xanth novels with the demons that I liked again. Perhaps they're growing on me after my initial negative impression in the Source of Magic.
I read the Xlibris hard cover, originally published by Pulpless. Pulpless renamed the title from Candle. For some reason, I noted Candle was started March 1997 as a TV series, (see the May 1997 and February 1998 newsletters), then written as a novel in early 1998, and published by Xlibris in 1999. Yet according to the April 1998 newsletter, it was started as a novel, with two chapters and summary in 1996, each chapter intended to be a TV episode, or maybe the whole as a film. Candle appears to have been finished, in first draft form, in March 1998. More about the early thinking of Candle, as it was originally known, can be found at Anthony's web-based newsletters. The next writing done after Candle was Key to Havoc, noted in the July 1998 newsletter as being in-progress.
Perhaps one of the more fun fantasy stories that Anthony wrote in this period, this is about a grandchild who goes to stay with her grandparents at a rented house, which turns out to have doors that open to other places, seeming other worlds. The house seems haunted, except that doesn't seem to fit the situation. This was a fast, engrossing escape from mundane reality.
I read the Mundania Press July 2004 second edition hardcover, with jacket art by Stacey L. King. Written April-August 1998 though the first chapter and summary appear to have been written a year previous. This is the beginning of the ChroMagic series. The sequel is Key to Chroma. The next book written after Key to Havoc was The Dastard.
This is a really big book, bigger than even the Geodessy novels. It took a long time to finish. Each book in the trilogy is 10 chapters long, and each chapter is a novella in its own right, often following a distinct story line, but fitting the larger narrative. Key to Havoc caught my interest for one basic reason: the tension between love and the political situation of Charm is coupled with the little guy having access to fulfilling his dreams. That's really what this story is about. It's full of sex, violence (there was a dungeon torture scene that was rougher than my taste), and intrigue. As Anthony calls it, hard hitting fantasy.
I read the Tor October 2000 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The author's note was finished 29 November 1998. It's not clear when the final submission draft was completed. The next book written after The Dastard was DoOon Mode, the conclusion to the Mode series. The Dastard is Xanth #24. Its sequel is Swell Foop.
This reminds me of a more severe version of Golem in the Gears, where the Dastard is like what an evil Grundy might be. I wonder if this totally messes up the Xanth timeline, such as that recorded in Question Quest. I also wonder how that affects the one (once) published on Anthony's website, presumably an extension and continual update of the one Question Quest is based on (which is labeled as an abridged version.
With the history of Xanth at stake, two individuals with completely separate lives and timelines struggle with understanding their place as individuals in a larger magic macrocosm. Becka is a human dragon (not from Draconia in Wildemount!) who wants to know her True Purpose. Meanwhile, the soulless, malevolent Dastard is wiping out magical history in Xanth, preying on anyone happier than him. Gee, I wonder where this is headed...
I read the Tor April 2001 first edition, with jacket art by Daniel Horne. The original trilogy was published by Ace/Putnam. The manuscript was finished at the end of April 1999, (see the Swell Foop author's note). The notes mention the novel was started in Dismember, meaning December 1998. The initial decision was announced in the December 1998 HiPiers newsletter. The February and April 1999 newsletters clarify.
This brings the Mode series to its conclusion, and a fitting, expected conclusion it is,
with both a twist, and a recognition of some of the issues presented from the beginning. Perhaps
expected
is not the right word to use, considering the twist(s), but by the time you get
to the end, it is expected and it is fitting, though perhaps controversial to some.
DoOon Mode returns to the animal androids, introduces a dragon version, and begins slowly to tie up the lose ends of the trilogy. The ultimate question of course is whether Colene will get her man, and more importantly be able to truly be happy.
A correction was offered in the December 2002 newsletter: De gustibus non carborundum. This is a misquote of the wrong phrase. Correcting the wrong phrase: De gustibus non est disputandum. This means there's no accounting for taste. The correct quote, intending to mean don't let the bastards get you down, is illegitimus non corborundum.
I read the Tor October 2001 first edition hardcover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The manuscript was finished in November 1999. Swell Foop is Xanth #25. It's sequel is Up in a Heaval.
Here we go again with the demons. The demon E(a/r)th is missing. Some thing with another Demon (with a capital D!) is up. Without the demon E(a/r)th, gravity will dissipate. Yet this Demon is unknown, and so part of that is the mystery of the story. The Swell Foop, naturally a pun on Shakespeare's fell swoop, instrument must be found. A whole bunch of characters are involved. That's really why we love Xanth: the characters. We also like the silliness, the puns, the nonsense, the inuendo, and anything else that makes fun of mundane (Mundania!) existence and all its inanity.
Some spoilers, perhaps, may follow.
Swell Foop mentions two things of interest: the nemesis star and Pluto's demotion as a planet. I read Asimov's Nemesis at the time, and loved it. It spoke of a brown dwarf star, if star is the right word for it, that was beyond or hidden by the kuiper belt, and which had sufficient gravity that in its swinging orbit might rip the planets from their orbits, or so goes my fuzzy memory of the book. The Nemesis star was supposed to explain missing mass calculated in the solar system. It then became known as Planet X, though this became Planet Nine after Pluto's demotion, with a smaller amount of mass calculated. Identifying and calculating the solar mass has led to finding Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto, though the latter is now categorized more accurately as a kuiper belt object (or set of objects, considering its moons), essentially a big comet (though comet has other implications). I agree with Tyson that because of its being out of the eliptical plane, and its make up and location (among other things), that it didn't develop with the rest of the planets. Pluto and its moons are not planets, and doesn't get to remain one from sentimentality or social momentum. Once Nemesis was disproven, and now Planet Nine is beginning to look suspicious, I suspect that there is no more missing planets, gas giants, proto-stars, brown dwarfs, or large set of small objects that are still out there in the solar system as missing mass. As to dark matter, who knows. It's funny that Nemesis and Pluto are made fun of here, regardless of the science or one's opinions about it.
I read the Xlibris trade paperback. Started in July 1999, the author's note was finished March 2000. The later date is because Swell Foop was written inbetween to meet the Tor deadline. After The Iron Maiden the next full length completed project was Up in a Heaval.
The Iron Maiden retells the story of Bio of a Space Tyrant from the perspective of Hope's sister. It both stands alone as a novel and reexplores the original series. It felt like I was rereading the original series, enjoying revisiting this science fiction world of Anthony's analogies. Some things were noticeable additions, and was nice to see what happened from Spirit's perspective, and in a way a good recap and rememberance. It also brings the story just a bit further beyond the original series, giving hints I suspect of Anthony's original plans for continuing the series. (See the Statesman author's note.) I wonder where this series might have gone, and how it might overlap with But What of Earth? and Cluster.
A comparison of scenes between the original series and this book suggest very subtle distinctions in how the scenes are described and expressed where they are overlayed between the two character's perspectives. Ultimately, I suspect that reading the original series will give the full impact, and The Iron Maiden is a great way to fill in the gaps as well as a revisit, whether immediately after, interspersed, or years later as it was for me. It also could just be a smaller, less involved way of enjoying the story.
I read the Tor October 2002 first edition hard cover with jacket illustration by Darrell K. Sweet. The manuscript was finished November 2000, interrupting the completion of Key to Chroma, which was finished after. Up in a Heaval is Xanth #26. The sequel is Cube Route.
The galleys were handled in the summer of 2001. He tried to write the manuscript on a new Linux system, but it didn't make it until most of the first draft was written. He tried starting out with the Linux version of WordPerfect (from memory, there was only one native version, version 8, which was not my first word processor on Linux, but was actually Abiword), but it didn't work out for this novel. It turns out, the use of the Linux version of WordPerfect was done with early beginnings and notes of Sopaths, and it was clear by the time of Up in a Heaval that WordPerfect wasn't going to work for him.
As a sarcastic summary, a snail-mail package from Mundania gets forwarded to the demon
Jupiter, who takes offense. It's like a Usenet flame war breaks out, started by Jupiter who tries
to destroy the environment of another demon, i.e. X(a/n)th. So Xanth inhabitants are
martialed to solve the problem and save Xanth. It's like a plot in need of characters for the
sake of amusement, and this one was amusing. Half way through the novel we are introduced to
Esk's and Bria's twins. Esk and Bria were introduced in the novel
Vale of the Vole. The story Adult
Conspiracy
, mentioned in the Up in a Heaval author's note, was referenced more
(in)directly in Harpy Thyme,
which it is probably best to read the story before
Harpy Thyme than now, if you haven't already and
decide not to warp your brain with the torpedo. However, if you must read the story,
because you're an Anthony completist like me, then at least you know where the twins came from
(though the result mentioned earlier in
Harpy Thyme).
I read the Mundania Press November 2003 hardcover, with jacket art by Stacey L. King. Written August-December 2000, during and after Up In a Heaval. Key to Chroma is the last novel and work of the millenium, though Anthony is not in agreement that 2001 begins the next. Either way, this means I've read every published book of Anthony's from the 20th century. Now if he'd publish the rest of his published short works that have not been collected into an Anthony book (as opposed to magazine or collection), then I could say I've ready everything of his that's been published in the 20th century, but alas this is not so. Plus, his unpublished (e.g. the original Athonology, Prostho Minus) short works, and his novel Unstilled World, have never seen the light of day. He started the beginning of The Sopaths after Key to Chroma, but didn't complete it. There were other incidentals, like finally getting his second autobiography published. However, the next thing he wrote was Tortoise Reform, though it wasn't published until a few years later. Cube Route is actually next in terms of sold for publication (and actually published).
Havoc's destiny is now a question. Who is he? Where did he come from? A series of quests for him and his companions occupy his time as he begins to investigate his new reality. What they discover leads to a dramatic discovery, setting the stage for the final book of the trilogy. I had a hard time getting into this one, but it turned out to be very interesting as I got into the second half of the novel.
As Key to Chroma clearly starts off, the ChroMagic series is full of sex. As Anthony states elsewhere, sex is to ChroMagic as puns are to Xanth. I can't say this is my favorite Anthony. The sequel is Key to Destiny.
I read the Tor October 2003 first edition hard cover with jacket illustration by Darrell K. Sweet. The manuscript was finished November 2001. This is the first complete Xanth written on GNU/Linux, but it seems somewhere along the line he switched from WordPerfect to StarOffice. I remember those days. I think this was the Sun version of StarOffice, version 5, not the earlier Motif based version 3. Tortoise Reform was the first novel written on the GNU/Linux system, not this one.
Cube Route is the 27th Xanth novel, or the trilogy cubed, completing the trilogy of trilogies. Puns abound as expected for Xanth. The sequel is Currant Events.
This is a story of finding love and acceptance as well as finding our inner beauty so that it is visible. We've had this theme before, but there's certainly differences of characters, as well as a counter Xanth where everything is opposite. In this case, the aptly named Cube is plain and lonely, but after taking on the body of a beautiful woman who is depressed to the point of suicidality, Cube begins to realize there's more than meets the initial eye. Of course, there's magic involved in Xanth and counter Xanth.
I read the Mundania Press, September 2007 first edition paperback, with cover art by SkyeWolf Images. This appears to have been finished August or September 2001, but the author's note is October 2004. Not sure of the disparity in time frame there, but likely publishing issues. The June 2001 newsletter notes its beginnings as a chapter and summary in April or May. More about the novel can be found in the October 2001 newsletter. Whatever happened, my guess is that it became an unsold novel, then in 2004 when Anthony was placing is ChroMagic books, as well as getting Pornucopia reprinted, that he decided to hand Tortoise Reform off to them, and wrote the author's note. The ISBN registration shows 2006. There must have been some delay from a 2005 printing, but I'm only guessing.
Another thing is that the final switch to Linux was made, and StarOffice (presumably 5 from
Sun) was the winner in what word processor to use on Linux after several false starts. I tried
Applix too around this time, and though I liked it better (though StarOffice 3 was my favorite),
the KDE word processor has continued to have charm in its curious way. I dumped Windows and Mac
in the mid-90s for Slackware Linux, and though professionally I've kept current with other
operating systems, at home I still use Slackware and my own custom roll. As Kernighan wrote
during this period, sometimes the old ways are best
. I wonder what Anthony would think of
going back to Emacs-style text processing with PTP and FinalWord or equivalent.
Billed as a children's story, I found this slower paced, with more nuanced thinking and language than I would expect of a child. This is a teen's story, I think, more than a ten year old's. It is about befriending and saving animals, dealing with depression, and finding an alternate reality to escape to, at least at first. I found the story well considered, clearly written by a parent with daughters, and insightful and sensitive as I've come to expect of Anthony's more serious work.
I read the Mundania Press June 2004 first hardcover edition. The August 2002 newsletter indicates that the first draft was almost finished (in July 2002). My guess is that the submission draft was finished that Fall, maybe September or October. The author's note is dated 17 March 2004, which was for the gallies, a final read through before it went to press. The sequel is Key to Liberty. The next new book written was Currant Events.
Key to Destiny follows the glamors, their search for the icons, and the use of the loom to discover its purpose, and to finally use and explore that purpose.
The tension in the previous books of whether Havoc will get to be with the love of his life as her husband is resolved, and their future begins to express itself in the sudden adoption of three problem children. They are unique in being able to perform magic in the non-magic zone of the imperial city. Meanwhile, more glamour icons are identified, and need to be found, as the icon tapestry is being woven, and new things are revealed along the way as the sister planet, Counter Charm, is exposed in its involvement with the changelings.
This series is a kind of pornography, wrapped in plot and characters. I found that reading this series off and on, one chapter at a time, was the easiest way to digest the constant sex. Read a chapter, put it down, read something else, then come back to it for a chapter when the mood struck, or when I started to worry I might lose track of the story line. This made the series not only more palatable, but more enjoyable. Anthony always delivers in the end, and the characters develop their own personalities and motivations, but if you don't like the sex you'll hate the series. I found it to be a bit much at times with this trilogy, and the magic concept was not as enticing to me as some of his other work. I perceive parallels with the Apprentice Adept series, which I think I prefer to ChroMagic. However, the science fiction part of the background of the series caught my interest. In the end, the novels were just too big, a bit too gratuitous without strong justification in the plot (it's more of the atmosphere and culture of the books, which Anthony suggests he wants his readers to get lost in), and not quite enough satisfaction with the reveal at the end.
I read the Tor October 2004 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in November 2002. In the author's note, he mentions using a MoNsTeR computer with Linux, and migrating to OpenOffice (which later ended up under Oracle, and the Apache). I suspected this might refer to his getting involved with system76, but that started in 2005, and which used Ubuntu for awhile, but that Ubuntu was in 2004. He later switched to Fedora, which is the continuation of Red Hat (not to be confused with Red Hat Advanced Server or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)).
There's a dragon world in Ida's moons, and the dragons are running rampant across Xanth. It seems that the Currant, a rare berry, is believed by Clio to hold an answer. There's always folks along the way that make a Xanth story so interesting. Otherwise, how could we stand the puns, (and this one has a lot). Currant Events is Xanth #28. The sequel is Pet Peeve.
The author's note mentions Anthony's involvement in the internet RPG Dragon Empires. His daughter Penny was into RPG, and one of his colaborators Judy Lyn Nye wrote two Xanth books in the Crossroads Adventure RPG books. Alas, Dragon Empires was shut down two years later.
I read the August 2015 Mundania Press LLC hardcover edition of The Pornucopia Compendium, with cover art by Joel Mallory and Niki Browning. Apparently, not as fancy a hardcover as the individual editions of from Mundania Press, from photos I've seen online. The cover art of Pornucopia has gone through variations in its editions since Black Sheep.
The text of The Magic Fart was finished January or February 2003, immediately before a
short story called The Key
, noted in the February 2003 newsletter, later published as the
second story in Relationships, and then followed by the Xanth
novel Pet Peeve.
Prior, unfulfilled from the prior attempt to find love and happiness, and doing nothing but gaining revenge and what he had lost from the prior venture, is now pressed further into the demon realm. A trap has been set for him in revenge for his revenge, with the promise of his perfect mate. Like the first, this is the grossest, most explicit sexual content in a book I've ever read. Yet Anthony somehow pulls it off with a plot, characterization, and a funny theme.
I wouldn't have read it except it's Anthony, and I was working through his work systematically, even though I had some residual damage from Pornucopia. The Magic Fart is only for the sexual misfit, with a couple screws loose, or Anthony completists, of which (I surely hope) I am the latter, or at least not the former.
I read the Tor October 2005 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in October 2003, after finishing The Magic Fart. Alfred was finished after, though started before. Pet Peeve is Xanth #29. The sequel is Stork Naked.
Xanth needs a Grundy-like character every so often, and the Peeve fills this need. The bird is hilarious. I've owned parrots, including a cockatoo, and this made me smile thinking of what a magic bird might be like in attitude. It gets even better when the goblin assigned by the Good Magician to find the bird a home is the exact opposite: a polite goblin with a very rude problem.
This book was set up to be hilarious in ways that out does some of the previous books. Not all Xanth is comedy. Some of it is serious, and even the puns are carefully tempered artifacts of the landscape, not the story itself. This is not one of those, but at the same time every Xanth has characters and theme that underly the stories. It's the ones with which we identify that make our Xanth favorites. This is one of mine.
I have the Xlibris 2007 softcover edition, the final book of Anthony's that I'm aware of that was placed with Xlibris. This is the fictionalized story of Piers' father, Alfred Jacob, from the perspective of the four women in his life, the third of which was his wife, Piers' mother. It is in the form of five novellas and an author's note. The data for these stories is from Alfred's journal and accompanying records as later confirmed in the author's note (as well as newsletters from the time).
The first story is about Alfred's first, or at least significant, crush and one of the last. The story telling is somewhat slow, but interesting at times. The second is about what is Alfred's idealized love of his life whom forever flavored his future relationships. The third is about meeting his spouse, getting married, losing their virginity, their rocky relationship, and the birth of Piers and his other siblings. It is told from Norma's not Alfred's perspective. Alfred volunteered as a Quaker in Spain during the second world war, then later started the Quaker Hilltop Farm community. The fourth story is of Genevieve whom Alfred has an affair with as his marriage with Norma disolves. Finally, is a return to his first crush. As his life comes to a close there starts to be a final woman, but his health devolves and that relationship never transpires.
I read the Phaze 2007 paperback with cover art by Debi Lewis. Phaze was an imprint of Mundania Press. The short story collection was written as a cohesive whole, intended for the volume, which may be unique for Anthony, as all his previous short story collections have stories that were targeted for science fiction publishers (mainly). The February 2004 newsletter indicated that the bulk of the stories of Relationships was written in December 2003 and January 2004, written after the completion of Pet Peeve and Alfred. This volume was first published with Venus press. The April 2006 newsletter indicated this was a trial, by Venus' invitation, with Anthony doing the promotion. Venus went out of business and Anthony had to go to the Mundania imprint Phaze. Phaze published this as Relationships I because by that point, Anthony had already written Relationships II, also published by Venus. After Phaze, when Mundania Press went out of business, was Dreaming Big Publications, where others of this series are published. Relationships was finished in early 2004 before starting Under a Velvet Cloak and towards the conclusion or after Alfred.
This is a collection of stories with the theme being relationships. In theory, these are not
all erotica, but if you know Anthony, you know where his brain goes, so really, these are
erotica. He's very imaginative, so these actually weren't as bad as I thought, and I've very much
enjoyed the series. Hot Game
was completely unrealistic (for it to happen), but was
fascinating for this Utah country boy.
I have the Mundania Press 2015 hardcover, with cover art by Niki Browning. It was completed in July 2004 (see the April and August 2004, and December 2007, newsletters), and the galleys for the Mundania Press edition in November 2007.
Under a Velvet Cloak is like a post-lude to the Incarnation of Immortality series. That series has five books, then two. This book plays on events in those last two, books six and seven. The original idea comes from one of Anthony's readers who identified clear plot trajectories that stem from revelations in those books, digging into the origins of the incarnations and establishing a more concrete concept of the magic timelines.
Anthony's highly sexualized series are all at play during this period, and though this book begins to see the beginnings of a warming of this, it is clear it is still active on his mind, from the ChroMagic series, to his Relationships story series, The Magic Fart, and Eroma. As his mainstream series are brought to an end, other than Xanth, an adult, sexually explicit, but not over-the-top (except for The Magic Fart) period of writing is at play. I don't think Under a Velvet Cloak is as bad as Anthony seemed to identify in his newsletters. If anything, it's more an indication that Anthony's writing has changed since the Incarnations of Immortality series was originally written, so its tenor is perhaps different if the series are read all at once. Certainly, once the ChroMagic series is brought to a close with this book, there will be some simple series, including a collaboration, as well as the Relationships story series, but his big science fiction and fantasy epics (other than Xanth) are done winding down with this story. This seems to be Anthony returning to his origins in shorter fiction, but alas not science fiction, which he was quite good at.
I read the Tor October 2006 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in October (maybe November?) 2004. Stork Naked is Xanth #30, the first trilogy after the cubed trilogy of 27 novels. The sequel is Air Apparent. The next novel to be written was Key to Liberty.
Xanth misfits are so misfit that they are no longer misfits but the norm. However, two centaur misfits, those rejected by the centaur community, have their baby from the Stork Works for the first time in Xanth history, only to have their baby kidnapped. The Good Magician doesn't seem to be helping though, and all the misfits of Xanth seem to band together to find out what happened, and to get not only their baby back, but also that of Surprise and Umlaut, who was on record as being too young, even though clearly the signaling occurred at the right age and the stork isn't blind. Meanwhile, an alternate frame of Xanths is exposed. No, not Ida's moons, or the reverse Xanth. There are parallel universes of Xanths. Lovely: there's going to be even more puns.
Written from December 2004 to July 2005. I have the Mundania Press hardcover first edition, dated April 2007, cover art by SkyeWolf. The ChroMagic sequel and final novel is Key to Survival. Key to Liberty was written after Stork Naked. The next Xanth was written after: Air Apparent.
Earth has come back to claim Charm. They're bent on domination. I had assumed it was the Chroma promiscuous society, enabled by technologically efficient birth control, and engaged by changelings that led to the constant sex. Like with Xanth and puns, part of the magic of Charm was a sexually active environment where influenced by magic or the changelings. However, from the first page introducing the humans from Earth in chapter 2, they're engaging in the same kind of sex. Yes, they're around Charm, but the implication is this is normal behavior. It reminds me of the tail in the Bio of a Space Tyrant series, but with the blatant sexuality of ChroMagic. Of course, there is a justification in the plot for this as I read, but I won't say more. It threw me at first.
In the first decade of the new millenium, Anthony's blatant sexuality in his writing continues
to increase. This novel begins to reach to the level of
Pornucopia, (I didn't think anything could
get that saturated). It's one thing to make a point in a short story or novella, such as with
In The Barn
, look at sexual situations and recognize their problematic nature and their
reality as in Firefly, but this is porn for its
own sake. I suppose that's fine, but as the fourth of five 400 page novels, it's a hard slog.
This novel took forever to read because of it, even though the story itself was as good as any of
Anthony's. Constant sex just doesn't carry page over page of such a large novel or series. The
one good thing about Key to Liberty was the reduction of the novella size chapters to
novellete and shory story sized chapters, with more of them. It's an improvement to the series,
or at least the constant breaks I needed to get through the novel.
I read the Tor October 2007 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in October 2005. Air Apparent is Xanth #31. The sequel is Two to the Fifth. The December 2005 newsletter has more about Air Apparent.
A soul napping? A murder mystery? A new husband is taken just as a marriage starts. The Good Magician Humphrey can't help: his book of knowledge is completely scrambled. Did I mention that the husband is Hugo, the Good Magician's son? Our heroine is blind, and some unlikely characters are along for the ride. Whose ride? Hugo's blind wife, who has to find Hugo. This is a typical Xanth, and it always ends well. Enter our antagonist: the Random Factor.
I read the Premier Digital Publishing (PDP) 2011 paperback edition. Oddly, neither the PDP, nor the Open Road Media Kindle, edition have an attribution for the cover artist, whom I thought did an excellent illustration for the book. Pandora Park was written in November 2005, after the Xanth novel Air Apparent. According to the December 2007 newsletter, a publisher was never found for the book. PDP is where Pandora Park was published finally in 2011. PDP was bought by Open Road Media, so is now found there, but without the publish-on-demand option that PDP offered. The December 2005 newsletter has a description of writing it and what the book is about.
Of all of Anthony's children's books, this is my favorite, though Balook is a rough tie with it, especially because of the elegant illustrations of that book. The park in question has a magical forest that a boy from the States, and a girl from China, are able to meet and interact in, getting to know one another. Having had such experiences in real life (not literal magic, but certainly magical), this story brought back some fond memories.
I read the Phaze March 2008 paperback with cover art by Debi Lewis. The cover is slightly modified from the first, essentially a blow up of the first with a Rook key lock at the bottom. This is a much larger volume than the first, and likely the biggest of the series. Relationships II was finished April 2006. Anthony waited to offer it as a sequel to Venus press, first seeing how they did with the first one. In the end, he sent it to them too, only to have them go out of business. After Relationships II, the conclusion to the ChroMagic series was written: Key to Survival.
I began buying this series for a friend, but when the Phaze editions went out of print, as its parent press, Mundania folded, I found that these early editions were being sold at enormous prices. (Amazon has them between $800-$1000.) Price gouging is a phenomena of free markets that make me wonder about the ethical failings of such a social system. No, I'm not selling my copies, even if I could actually extort that amount. Hopefully, Anthony can get these into Dreaming Big Publications, so they're available to the public again.
The Relationship volumes are a collection of short stories and novelettes of erotica with the
theme being relationships. The stories for II, mostly like I, were written for the volume and not
published elsewhere. There's a kind of sequel to the Hot Game
story found in the first
volume here. A Relationships III was to follow, becoming a series, once
he caught the bug.
I read the Tor October 2008 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in September 2006. Two to the Fifth is Xanth #32. The sequel is Jumper Cable.
A robot who wants to be a playwright? He goes to ask the Good Magician Humphrey how this can be done, only to be told he has to save Xanth. Why do we always have to save Xanth? Can a merry band of actors, a wannabe playwright, and three powerful child twins save Xanth from destruction? Will a rediculous bard fall in love? This is typical Xanth. Keep an eye on those twins. There's later fun novels with them.
The first draft was started in December 2006 or January 2007, and finished May 2007. The final draft was finished in June 2007. The Xanth novel Jumper Cable was written next, interupting the partially written Relationships III.
This is the standard erotic material that we've come to expect from ChroMagic. Now it
extends beyond Earth to the galaxy as the final battle with the machines will begin. In an
earlier comment, as I started the book, I asked the question, tongue in cheek, Are the
machines going to start having sex too, or is that a biological thing only?
I'm having flash
backs to TNG's fully functional
Data. Not only do they, but it gets into interspecies sex
on an inter-galactic level. Anthony's erotic bounds have no limits it seems, but as usual,
somehow there's character, plot, and thematic development along the way, and the sex is finally
explained in the end. ChroMagic was a hard slog. Worse than Xanth's puns, the sex
overwhelms the story for me so requires breaks inbetween, but thankfully the chapters are in the
form of short stories, and so I read it this way. It took me months to finish Key to
Survival, the final book of the ChroMagic series, but I'm satisfied (if not relieved)
by the completion.
I read the Tor October 2009 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in November 2007. Jumper Cable is Xanth #33. Its sequel is Knot Gneiss. Several of the stories for Relationships III were written before the writing of Jumper Cable, and the remaining written after.
Castle Roogna was a favorite Xanth. It may be because it was the end of the original trilogy, and certainly better than the second novel which I didn't exactly like. (Perhaps I should reread it and see if it has the same affect on me the second time.) It's also because I love the theme: a youngster must come of age quickly, but for (mostly, i.e. assuming he can survive it) harmless reasons. This begins to stretch the boundaries of the adult conspiracy, gives an introduction to Castle Roogna and its zombies, has an epic battle, and gives the most interesting anthropomorphization of a spider. Giving perspective from non-adults and non-humans seems to be one of Anthony's specialities.
I've probably done a better job describing that novel here than I did in the Castle Roogna entry, but this is its proper sequel, and Jumper is a spider of that lineage. It's also, really, a kind of sequel to the Source of Magic, which I think Anthony has vindicated in my mind through later Xanth novels.
This time Pluto is an involved demon who has been demoted. Sorry Anthony, an oort cloud object is not a planet. Pluto is not in the planetary orbital plane. Perhaps it is, in a way, a tiny planet, and that term might have a more colloquial definition in the public mind. If Pluto fell more closely to the sun (what would that mean with its moons?), it would begin to desintegrate like any other comet. In actuality, it does. Some suggest it is a unique kind of object, not a planet or comet. Regardless, Anthony expresses well the general perception in typical Xanth fascetious humor. Meanwhile, among this back ground, Jumper must recable the outernet to the internet, and the twins are back as sexy 19 year olds to torment him when he must temporarily become a male human.
Yeah, Xanth is silly, but there's something to be said for punnish humor that makes fun of day to day things in the real world.
I read the Phaze January 2009 paperback with cover art by Debi Lewis. The cover is slightly modified from the first, essentially a blow up (and more than the second) with a light bulb at the bottom. I was shocked when I went to buy this for a friend and learned that, with Mundane Press and Phaze being out of business, and thus the series out of print, that it was going on Amazon for nearly $900. I understand that Dreaming Big Publications will be taking on the older series, but as of yet it is not available.
This is a collection of short stories and novelettes of erotica with the theme being relationships. They were written for the volume and not published elsewhere. Par for the course from the other volumes, and a bit of naughty entertainment along the way.
The Alternity realm is not a new approach for Anthony, but is unique to this volume. We saw this approach in Killobyte, among other places. It makes me wonder if it inspired the approach taken in Eroma. The next writing was the finish up of the last part of Climate of Change, the conclusion to the Geodyssey series, and then Knave, which can be found in the collection Cautionary Tales. They are described in the August 2008 newsletter. Then is the Xanth novel Knot Gneiss. The story Serial was rejected by Phaze, so was published separately, then also collected in Cautionary Tales. See the February 2009 newsletter.
I read the Tor May 2010 hardcover. The jacket cover seemed like a basic clip art, no real illustration, but nice enough. This is the fifth and final book in the Geodyssey series, published a decade after most of the book was written. It was finished between May and July 2008, after Jumper Cable. I have notes that Climate of Change was completed after the book Orn was updated for its Mundania Press paperback edition. This was followed by the original The book binding seems to be an improvement over past volumes (and especially Quest for the Fallen Star). Maybe there was an issue with those couple of years at Tor, but the binding glue would crack and the block sever with even careful reading, and consistently, in previous Geodyssey volumes. There are no maps in this volume. Climate of Change was finished without the help of his researcher.
There's a lot of history here that's fascinating to have visualized and explored, similar to previous volumes, but this seems more history thick. It is a worthy conclusion to the series, which I'm sad to see had to stop, like other series of Anthony's. All good things must come to and end; well, except Xanth.
I read the Tor October 2010 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in October 2008. This is Xanth #34. The sequel is Well-Tempered Clavicle.
Love stories and heart's desires is the theme of this book, though perhaps not original. The
quest is to retrieve a knot of petrified reverse wood and nuetralize its effects. The need to
save Xanth every novel gets old though. Sometimes the little-guy-finding-himself type story, like
the original Spell for Chameleon, has its charms. I wonder if the nature of writing a
series is to jump the shark
, as the Happy Days series phrase has become the
standard metaphor for hyperbole reaching rediculous levels. Knot Gneiss was a good story,
by itself.
I read the Phaze January 2011 first edition paperback with cover art by Niki Browning. The cover is more elaborate than the first trilogy's, with tastefully hidden but tantalizing nude couples. I understand that Dreaming Big Publications will be taking on the older series, but as of yet it is not available. It's interesting that Roman numerals are not used for the title, as they were for the first three.
Relationships 4 is a collection of short stories and novelettes of erotica with the
theme being relationships between the average and normal person, not movie-like, nor glamerous
people. The stories were written for this volume and were not published elsewhere.
Relationships 4 was finished in July 2009. The July 2009 newsletter has a note about the
story Running the Line
, written in June, that Anthony was worried wouldn't make it past
the sensors. It made it in.
One story stood out to me: Birthday Suit
. I read a story once of the same name, that I
remember as being by Anthony, and very much reminded me of this series' style. It was about a
woman who wore a birthday suit, an invisible, see through clothing that was not possible to tell
by touch or sight that she was wearing it, yet after sex, it was clear that the suit's membrane
acted like a condom. My memory is that I read it in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction, but I was not able to find a record of it. I thought that this was a republication
of it, but apparently not. If anyone knows of the story I'm thinking about, let me know. It seems
like I've seen it by a couple authors.
Some story ideas intended for the Relationships series end up being clearly connected in such a way that ultimately, they found their way into a separate book: Eroma, which was written after Relationships 4.
The author finished Eroma in August 2009. I have the Open Road Media 2011 edition paperback, but printed in 2017. I tried reading the Open Road Media ebook, but it is a botch in terms of typography. The paragraphs are not spaced, nor indented, so it is difficult to read. You'd think after carrying it for several years that they'd have fixed this. Eroma was written before Well-Tempered Clavicle.
Eroma is six stories that seemed slated for the Relationship series, but which had
unique story lines that (mostly) fit well together. The stories progress in order, though
independent, and can be read one at a time, but should be in order. There's parallels with the
Apprentice Adept trilogy and its game format, as well as stories that are similar to those
in Killobyte, which was more action oriented,
though I suspect it is actually picked up from the Alternity stories of
Relationships III. Even Xanth has computer alternate reality frameworks.
Anthony seems to enjoy this approach. Eroma is about equal with the
ChroMagic series with sex, but doesn't match the brain damage of
Pornucopia. The castle scene in
Killobyte seemed similar to
Maiden Heaven
.
Eroma is the last work Anthony finished before his daughter Penny's death.
I read the Tor October 2011 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Darrell K. Sweet. The submission draft was finished in November 2009. It was finished after Eroma. This is Xanth #35. Its sequel is Luck of the Draw.
Picka Bones plays music with his bones, enough that a princess falls in love with him, but she has meat on her bones that disgusts him. There are others with issues. Naturally, they go to the magician of information to figure out what to do. Oh, it gets better: do they need to open Pundora's Box (yes, Pun-dora), or one might think of it as the Good Magician Humphrey opening Pundora's Box, to get the answer to their problems?
I have the Fantastic Planet Press 2011 paperback edition, an imprint of Eraserhead Press. The
cover art is a young nude woman with a dark, cloudy or ominous background, by Dan Henk. The
author's note is dated June 10, 2010. It was finished after
Well-Tempered Clavicle and before
Luck of the Draw. The next writing was the story Privy
, which
is found in the collection Cautionary Tales. The February
through June 2010 newsletters document the main work on Sopaths, though previous
newsletters have nuggets from time to time of writing the original chapter or two and summary,
and then notes and other work that led up to the completing sprint of writing. See the author's
note for the dates to know where to look in which newsletters. Afterwards was the story
Statues
, its sequel, Just Desserts
, then Difference
.
As I finished Alfred, and began looking into the beginnings of Under a Velvet Cloak in Anthony's newsletters, which I've entirely read (the online newsletters that is), but look back to identify context in reading, I found that Piers' website is being redone in WordPress. As I was in the middle of one newsletter, and moving on to the next, pieces were disappearing. Some reappear on WordPress, some don't. So I went to the index of the old newsletters, and it too disappeared as I was using it. Someone should teach their webmistress(?) about HTTP redirect configurations so that old files still present are not lost, and files deliberately removed are marked as gone using HTTP return codes. It seems I am left to the author's notes at this point, my memory, and the internet archive to identify writing order. (Search the text of the internet web archive is more difficulty than searching Anthony's site directly.)
The March 2010 newsletter indicates the restarting of the novel. The first chapter was written in 2001 on WordPerfect (8?) on Linux. The next four in February 2010, then disrupted by book reading and proof gallies. (Sometimes he does review blurbs, sometimes it's an aspirational author wanting an opinion, which sometimes leads to a collaboration.) The May newsletter indicates another chapter written, but he had to care for his wife who took a fall fracturing knee and elbow. He finished the first draft in May, according to the June newsletter, so the author's note date is from the completion of the novel, not a change in the gallies from a publisher, at least for the edition I have.
The story turned out to be better than expected. It is uncomfortable in places as it tackles brutality and sexual explotation by children of others (including children). Anthony imagines what it is like for children to be born with no conscience. Thankfully, he moves some of this off-screen, out of the direct line of the story. The real story is how survivors make a family and try to discover what has happened to them, which makes the story more bearable.
I read the Tor October 2012 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Judie Dillon. Darrell
K. Sweet has been doing covers for Anthony across publishers for years, so this is an Anthony
staple that has changed. The submission draft was finished in October 2010.
Luck of the Draw is Xanth #36. Its sequel is Esrever Doom.
The book Relationships 5 was in-progress, and the stories Medusa
then Rat Bait
followed, the latter written after the first chapter of Luck of the
Draw in December 2009. Rat Bait
didn't make it into
Relationships 5, but is found instead in
Cautionary Tales. Inversion
was the story that followed,
and it did make it. Other stories were written for Relationships 5 up
to Difference
, after having finished The Sopaths, then he
moved on to finish Luck of the Draw, starting with chapter 2 in August 2010.
I guess when you clean out your garage in the real world, it spawns a whole new set of ideas, especially if you're a writer. For Anthony, we have an 80 year old man cleaning out his garage. Next thing you know, the man is in Xanth. There's a foundation of youth, a love spring, a magic talent, and a girl. Oh, and a dog is brought along, because who would leave Mundania without a dog? (Cat people: hush.). Oh and the demons are back with their games. Go figure.
I read the 2013 Fantastic Planet Press trade paperback edition, an imprint of Eraserhead Press. The cover art is by Alan M. Clark. The collection, with Evan Filipek, was assembled in 2011, approximately after Luck of the Draw. I also have the Amazon Kindle edition from Open Road Media, which I read on my phone while waiting for my coffee to brew in the morning, a tradition I started finishing Aliena, when I realized I had forgot the Anthony novel I was reading at the time on a vacation. The collection work was first announced in the November 2010 newsletter and finished in December 2010. The March 2013 newsletter has a description of it, including that Anthony had to pay for it to be published, (explaining the delay in publication).
One and Wonder puts together ten stories of classic science fiction. These are the
stories that Anthony has mentioned in his other author's notes and biographies as influential in
getting Anthony started as a writer, though according to his autobiographies, he originally tried
to draw and paint before he engaged writing, and finished his bachelor's degree in creative
writing. One of the Asimov stories I had lost, when selling my collection to pay for rent after
the dot-com crash, which was included in this collection (the first of Asimov's robot stories),
though I also enjoyed The Equalizer
.
Finished in January 2011, the collaboration with J. R. Rain. I started Aladdin Relighted after One and Wonder, with both an Amazon Kindle and paperback edition that is unmarked as to publisher or artist. The next written work is Trail Mix: Amoebe, started in February 2011 and finished in March. See the March 2011 newsletter. The sequel, Beetle Juice was begun in April and finished in May. The sequel to Aladdin Relighted is Aladdin Sins Bad written in June and July.
This novel read quickly, a fun action and adventure book, taking off from the time of Aladdin's losing his kingdom that the genie of the lamp had provided him in the famous tale. A beautiful woman hires a vagrant merchant to find her son who is soon to be killed. A hunt on several levels.
A side note from the February 2011 newsletter discussed copyright, but first a bit of
background. In the consitutional convention, it was debated whether the US constituion should
forbid copyright and patents all together. In the end, a clause allowed limited
laws to be
passed by Congress. The first signed in to law was by George Washington, a law for a 10 year
copyright, requiring renewal with a process that expected justification as to why a monopoly,
against the natural rights of the people, should be granted. This is one place Anthony and I have
not seen eye to eye. However, I comply with the legal rights of authors. I even wrote Anthony
once (which I believe he indirectly noted in a newsletter) about his thoughts on my buying used
editions of his books. The European law that we began to honor in the mid-twentieth century
started with the life time of the author, then was extended every 25 years. That is now 95 years
from publication or 120 years from the initial authoring. So now we're worse than Europe and the
UK. Thankfully, the irony of Orwell's Ninenteen eighty-four being occasionally withdrawn
from electronic devices (such as Kindles), being under copyright in the US but not the UK, is not
lost on even Anthony. I believe Senator Hatch's interpretation of limited as being a day less
than infinity
is utter nonsense, and is illegal constitutionally.
So to the note from the February 2011 newsletter, Anthony has always struggled to keep rights to his works by licensing to publishers, instead of selling the entire copyright, so that he can recover the work in ten years (or so) and find publication elsewhere, due to the problems of publishers remaindering works, keeping the work from being republished or reprinted. Anthony notes that authors and heirs can now recover rights 35 years after contract, and reprint their works. Personally, I wish the original sensibility of US copyright would return, but perhaps that requires too much bureaucracy overhead to evaluate the merits to the public of copyright renewal after limited (i.e. short!) periods of time.
I am read the Premier Digital Publishing (PDP) paperback edition, copyright 2011. The March 2011 newsletter announced its writing, and the consideration for Amazon publication. I wonder what happened there? Amoebe was finished in April. It was written on PCLinuxOS with OpenOffice.
Trail Mix: Amoebe is about Tod who finds a magic forest trail, right at his office door, which then follows him home. This idea reminds me of Stephen King's Drawing of the Three, where after Roland's chase of the man in black, he discovers a door, with a door knob and frame, but nothing else, as if it is calling him to open it and walk through. So he does. It starts out somewhat like his Geodyssey stories, finding a trail and meeting a prehistoric woman, then gets more science fantasy with a small, bug eyed monster they call Bem, then straight into fantasy with a sexy vamping vampire who vamps Tod then doesn't stop, vamp of course being a euphamism. The vampire was a bit over-the-top at first but the character settled in as the story progressed. Then others are met along the way and the purpose of the trail becomes clear. I'm liking the main approach: 10 chapters and ten stories, all of which follow the same format (perhaps similar to Eroma), and in a way a short version of the early ChroMagic trilogy i.e. of a digestable size. This was great for night time reading.
I read the Premier Digital Publishing (PDP) paperback edition, copyright 2011. Trail Mix 2: Beetle Juice was announced as a possible sequel to Trail Mix: Amoebe in the March 2011 newsletter, and confirmed being finished in May in the May and June 2011 newsletters. Odd that it was a possible sequel as it was the original planned story, according to the author's note, Trail Mix: Amoebe being more like a prequel to give Trail Mix 2: Beetle Juice its foundation. Curiously, Trail Mix 2: Beetle Juice has nine chapters, not ten.
Wetzel is introduced at the end of Trail Mix: Amoebe, a were unicorn, and handsome male that has telepathy. The story starts with background on Wetzel, and moves straight into sex. The mission, the main directive of the plot, doesn't become clear until about half way into the book. Trail Mix 2: Beetle Juice is a story heavy on character and theme, especially Wetzel and the preservation of a species against poachers.
I read the Amazon ebook edition while at work waiting for coffee, and the Amazon print-on-demand paperback, though neither indicate who the publisher was. Indications are, from the newsletters, that it was published by Amazon, and the receipt from the purchase suggests it though doesn't exactly confirm it. The June 2011 newsletter notes that Aladdin Sins Bad was planned to be written in June and July of that yaer. The August 2011 newsletter confirms the success of that plan. The submission draft was finished in August, the last to be written on PCLinuxOS with OpenOffice, finishing with Fedora (the new name of Red Hat Linux, not to be confused with Red Hat Enterprise Linux) with LibreOffice, the community fork of the Oracle and later Apache OpenOffice. Aladdin Sins Bad is the sequel to Aladdin Relighted, and is followed by (and concludes with) Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman.
Aladdin, and the son of the woman who had hired him, go on a sea voyage to rescue the wife of Sinbad the sailor, and find buried treasure. It's a typical adventure for an Anthony and Rain Aladdin story, full of nymphs, demons, djinn, and sirens.
I read the Tor October 2013 first edition hard cover with jacket art by Judie Dillon. Darrell K. Sweet has been doing covers for Anthony across publishers for years, so this is an Anthony staple that has changed. The submission draft was finished in November 2011, which was written after Aladdin Sins Bad, beginning in August 2011. Esrever Doom (Mood Reverse spelled backwards) is Xanth #37, the last Tor book from Anthony, and the first written from scratch with LibreOffice on Fedora. Did something about the Macmillan buy-out of Tor not go over well, or did Xanth-onlyism finally get to be too much for Anthony? The sequel is Board Stiff.
Kody finds himself in hospital, then wakes up in Xanth. Wah?! He begins a quest to find his way back to Mundania, but earns his keep along the way in Xanth. Reversal seems to be a theme as of late. The Good Magician Humphrey doesn't seem to be immediately involved. The beginning is fascinating and immediately brought me into the story. Esrever Doom is as good as any other Xanth.
I read the Phaze August 2012 first edition paperback with cover art by Niki Browning. The cover follows on the vol 4. cover, but is not as tantalizing. I understand that Dreaming Big Publications will be taking on the older series, but as of yet it is not available. This is the last volume I have from a Mundania Press imprint, now out of business.
Relationships 5 is a collection of short stories and novelettes of erotica with the
theme being relationships. They were written for the volume, mostly before
Esrever Doom, but completed afterwards in December 2011. Two
stories caught my imagination. The first was a somewhat realistic imagining of what it was like
for a human and a Neanderthal to mate. The second was a typical young person's fantasy of working
late in a warehouse in the heat and uhm, well a mutual agreement to remove their clothes, which
of course that leads where it is expected that will lead. The story Medusa
is mentioned in
the December 2009 newsletter as being the first writing done after
Well-Tempered Clavicle.
This was begun after Esrever Doom in December 2011, but finished
after Relationships 5 in January 2012. It is the first Anthony novel
targeted only for electronic publication, partly because of its size, and is the first Anthony
story of novella or novel size that never has seen print publication. It was later collected
together as part of The Metal Maiden Collection. As Anthony remarked in the March 2012
newsletter, These days I don't worry much about traditional publishing; it is dying
.
This is Anthony's version of The Bicentennial Man, (my description, not Anthony's).
Unlike Asimov, however, Anthony picks a female android instead of a male robot, and makes her,
as Data in Star Trek might say, fully functional
. She wants to be recognized legally as a
person, (the Asimov connection I'm seeing). This remains a viable question to ask, especially
without the laws of robotics and other Asimovian optimistic trappings. In this case, she wants to
marry a human male, so the female perspective adds to it, and it seems to me Anthony is actually
not bad with this.
Written in February 2012 after To Be a Woman, the idea was separate for this story, but when written a character in To Be a Woman was used chronologically following that story.
Oh the tangle of this one. A student joins an exchange program that has him exchange bodies, perhaps similar to Anthony's Cluster without the aura, mind transfer with body exchange allowing one's thoughts and awareness to control a body elsewhere. First he finds out the animals of this world are not only telepathic, but able to defend themselves against a human, but then he finds himself falling in love, and has a dilemma when it's time for the exchange program to be over.
Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman was started in or before March 2012 and finished in May. See the April and June 2012 newsletters. The June newsletter referenced Amazon print on demand (POD), which now makes me wonder if the mysterious printing that doesn't identify either or cover artist is Amazon. That would fit the ebook licensing statement inside the printed version. If so, Anthony must have put these with Open Road Media later, which means the POD option is gone.
I reading both the kindle and on-demand paperback edition. Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman is the sequel to Aladdin Sins Bad, and the conclusion to the trilogy. Aladdin Sins Bad and Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman can be read as a single book, a single story in two parts. It is the story of the rescue of the nymphs encountered in Aladdin Sins Bad, that escalates into saving the world, meanwhile wrapping up loose plot threads.
I read the Open Road Integrated Media Amazon 2014 Kindle edition. Odd Exam is the third novella that never saw print publication: it was only published electronically. Odd Exam was developed in May 2012 and written in June 2012 after the author finished Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman.
A virtual reality college entrance exam becomes more as this multiplayer game becomes recognized as a real existence on another world, fighting others and alien monsters, and along the way falling in love and dealing with romance. I really enjoyed this story, my favorite so far of the ebook-only novellas.
The Metal Maiden is a collection of four novellas published by Open Road Media, put together in August 2013. As far as I'm aware, there is no print media version available.
The two previous novellas lay the ground work for this story. To Be a Woman was written as a separate story. Flytrap is a sequel in a way to both it and Shepherd, but mostly to Shepherd, making The Metal Maiden a series. It was noted that Flytrap was reviewed in July, so presumably that's the galley read through by Anthony, making it a June-July novel. See the August 2012 newsletter, where the sequel was announced.
Mona mind exchanges to a planet with a human colony. Her host is a pregnant woman. It's the same planet as the telepathic sheep, and Mona knows the android who got married. This novella wraps up some loose ends introduced by Shepherd. It ends on a cliff hanger and the story is concluded in Awares.
The Metal Maiden is a collection of four novellas published by Open Road Media, put together in August 2013. As far as I'm aware, there is no print media version available. The Metal Maiden is a bit after-the-fact. To Be a Woman and Shepherd were originally separate ideas. Enough influence from To Be a Woman led to Shepherd having some references and fitting into the same framework. That led to the two sequels to the first two novels to became a novella series, though the first two novels could be read independently without awareness of each other.
An aware is a human chameleon, one who is so aware of their surroundings that they blend in, physically and socially. The emancipated android of To Be a Woman, later appearing in Flytrap, discovers the plot for an alien invasion from a planet of telepathics and must find a way to rescue Earth.
This is the conclusion to the series. Awares was reported as complete in the September 2012 newsletter, and collected into The Metal Maiden.
I read the 2015 Open Road Media hardcover. This is a reprint of the Premier Digital Publishing (PDP) January 2014 edition. Open Road Integrated Media bought PDP. When I got to the end of this edition, the last two paragraphs was missing. I have an email from the author with the missing text, and I believe he posted it in one of his newsletters, (yeah, I was the fan he mentioned there). My guess is current editions have been corrected. Board Stiff is Xanth #38. The sequel is Five Portraits.
Board Stiff was begun after Awares in August-September 2012, and interrupted for part of the Writer's Retweet series. Board Stiff was finished December 2012. It was finished on a new system76 Linux system, but using Fedora (not the pre-installed Ubuntu) with KDE. How does Anthony create a character that is a literal board and make it work with relationships, love, and all?
I read the Dreaming Big Publications 2016 edition paperback of Writer's Retweet, with cover art by Macario Hernandez III. The November 2011 newsletter indicated that Anthony was doing a new thing. Instead of having blog posts retweeted on his Twitter account (maintained by his blogger and publisher), he would have tweets that would be pieces of a story. In the end, that was five stories in all, averaging over 100 tweets per story, most finished in December 2011, but the last story, more of a novella taking up a majority of the book, was finished during the writing of Board Stiff. The completion of the final novella was announced in the January 2013 newsletter, and scheduled for tweeting throughout that year, and possibly into the next. In the June 2016 newsletter, it is noted the book was originally called The Twitter Collection.
You can tell the paragraphs are small, but the stories follow from their own merit, and sometimes it seems that paragraphs contain several tweets as the book improves the typography and text layout. These are typical Anthony stories with a new publisher, Dreaming Big, that appears to be a common secondary publisher for him now (for instance, see the Relationships series), the main one being Open Road Media.
The January 2013 newsletter indicates that Dragon Assassin was half complete by the writing of the newsletter, finished after The Twitter Collection in January 2013. I began reading it from the back of the print edition of Aladdin Sins Bad.
I read the Amazon print on-demand edition. It has beautiful cover art of a woman with long hair with a sword, and man to the side, also with a sword, and a castle in the background. That's a good enough sense of the story. In a way, this felt like early Spenser novels from Robert B. Parker, but when Spenser was having a bad month, wasn't quite on his game at least with the ruffling feathers games he played to find out the who-dunnit. This is a who-dunnit, like Spenser going to the Terry Brooks Magic Kingdom, the dragon game. OK, enough silly mixed story references. This was an engrossing story, typical Anthony but with J. R. Rain's investigative sensibilities. I can see why Anthony tried out WereWoman.
I read the Open Road Integrated Media Amazon 2014 Kindle edition. Aliena was announced in the January 2013 newsletter, and finished by the author in February 2013, (see the March 2013 newsletter). It was written after what became the The Metal Maiden Collection and the Xanth novel Board Stiff, but specifically it was the next novel after the collaboration Dragon Assassin. It was also the sixth work of Anthony's without a print edition.
Following are thoughts that came to mind as I licensed my second ebook, for a cost. If you only want to know about Aliena, skip to the last paragraph or two.
Aliena is the first book I licensed for electronic use for a cost. That's not to say I don't have electronic books, mainly public domain or free of charge, (my second Amazon Kindle book, which I got on a zero-cost deal). See, I have some issue with the exhorbitant prices of an ebook versus a printed book. A printed book has the cost of the paper, the binding, distribution, advertising. There's something about the feel of a printed book in your hands in a nice looking arrangement and cover. An electronic book you have to read on your own device, and it costs the distributor and publisher almost next to nothing for one copy versus thousands. That's not to say an ebook doesn't cost for typography, editing, copy editing, advertising, and a hosted sphere (if digitally locked by anti-copying encryption, otherwise copying can proliferate without traceable cost once the first copy is distributed).
Certainly, services cost a little more, such as Amazon, because of keeping the book on its services. Amazon downloads on to the Kindle, or Kindle app, on 3 allowed devices (so you can read on your phone on the run, and on your tablet at home). It's when the cost of the ebook becomes similar to the printed version that I raise an eyebrow and have refused to purchase a license for such texts. College text price gouging I find especially problematic. My guess, from newsletter comments, is that the author doesn't agree. Remember the days when we all recognized that a printed book was nicer, and more compact, to read than a Xeroxed copy (and certainly less effort than hand written)? There was motivation that was natural, and fair use laws made more sense in this context. So though I neither believe that software or writing (or art) should not be subject to copyright (at least the idea of plagiarism seems ethical and societely benficial to protect, one of the seven copy rights, though that seems like a public benefit too), I am convinced that copyright of the type we practice today (not the original constitutional concept) is deeply flawed and creates all sorts of problems in the digital age. The Lockean land ownership analogy no longer applies, and the social contract has become digitally duplicitous in favor of publishers, not the public nor the author (the original social copyright contract).
Aliena came about when I was on a holiday with my family and realized I had forgot the Anthony novel I was reading at the time. I was aware that Anthony had works that had never made print, and were only available in electronic format. I got on my tablet, saw Aliena for $2.99 and figured that was a winner. I enjoyed the book while enjoying my vacation. Other Anthony ebooks I've got when specials are run that let me get the book for the right price.
Aliena is about an Alien symbiant in a beautiful woman host. They fall in love with a man she lives near, then things go wrong and the human host rejects the alien. The alien must join with another human. Will her lover accept her with a new body?
I read the Open Road Media 2015 hardcover edition. As with Board Stiff, I have no idea who did the cover illustration (on the actual hard back: there's no dust jacket. The electronic edition came out in 2014). It was written out-of-band, not long after Board Stiff, and right on the heels of Aliena, finished in May 2013, I believe right after the collaboration Dragon Assassin. Five Portraits is Xanth #39.
A basilisk becomes human, gets a soul, and rescues five children from Xanth's future, a future where apparently Xanth will cease to exist. Meanwhile, the pun virus of the previous book that nearly whipes out Xanth still has some residual after effects.
I read the 21 October 2014 Kindle ebook from Open Road Media. It was prepped in May, and written in June 2013, following Five Portraits. WereWoman was written at the suggestion of Anthony's collaborator, J. R. Rain, (see the June 2013 newsletter). I'm not sure why Open Road Media doesn't credit the cover art to the Anthony novels.
WereWoman is a Noir fantasy about a shape changing for hire detective who specializes in supernaturals. A witch hires the detective to find the murder of a warlock. This leads to the murder trail of other supernaturals and sexual intrigue that is a constant in the story.
As a side note, relating to the June 2013 newsletter, a comment about Jennifer Odom who was killed in a field, taken there from after leaving her bus stop on the way home from school. In 2023 her murderer, Jeffery Norman Crum was charged based on matching up DNA evidence from other similar crimes he had commited.
I read the Open Road Media 2014 Amazon Kindle ebook edition. Cautionary Tales is a collection of short stories and essays. Each story or essay is prefaced to indicate if there's something to watch out for, in case the reader wishes to skip reading that story (or essay). It appears to have been finished in July 2013, and a note in the August 2013 newsletter gives details. This was assembled after WereWoman was completed.
Cautionary Tales was not as bad as I thought from the title, though a couple stories were a bit intense. Basically, this comes down to Anthony has stories that don't fit the main stream market. It's not clear why he's shy about it in this volume as opposed to previous, like Anthonology and Alien Plot.
In some ways I like this about face in returing to shorter works. Anthony hit the pinnacle of size with his ChroMagic series: huge quarter million word tomes. Unfortunately, there's stories building up again that haven't been published or collected in the same way as Cautionary Tales. I'd rather read small novels that are actually published, than know there are stories out there I can't read at all, (e.g. Prostho Minus!). There's also a bunch of one-off stories that get into a magazine or anthology which won't be available for some time, if at all, or are difficult or too expensive to find.
The final story, Adult Conspiracy
, was written in 1992, sold in 1994, and never
published: the targeted anthology never saw print. It was written to purposely torpedo Xanth,
looking into the barbaric practices behind stork delivery. It is about Esk and Bria, who got
together at the end of Vale of the Vole. Adult
Conspiracy
was written before Harpy Thyme,
where the second chapter seems to solidify the torpedo as canonical by referencing it.
These are mentioned in Cautionary Tales, but are not always clear where they were published. This list is to keep track of the writing (but I've not read them):
Dolfin Tayle was started in August, and finished in September, of 2013. See the September 2013 HiPiers newsletter. That seems to have been written quite quickly, so makes me wonder if it was started earlier than August. Relationships 6 was written inbetween the collaborative efforts with J. R. Rain on Dolfin Tayle, though was finished after both Dolfin Tayle and his later follow up novel Aliena Too, which was finished before Relationships 6 was completed.
I started reading Dolfin Tayle from the back of the Amazon edition of Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman, where the first chapters are provided as an enticement to buy. I finished reading the J. R. Rain's private press paperback, instead of Amazon's print-on-demand as suspected of previous J. R. Rain collaboration prints (and early on one of Anthony's newsletters), with unattributed cover art of a dolphin and a human swimming in the water.
One thing I noticed more consciously with this book, and somewhat with Dragon Assassin, was something also noticed with Anthony's collaboration with Philip Jose Farmer in The Caterpillar's Question: a kind of bait-and-switch between the authors as they wrote chapter(s) and left things off for the collaborator to follow up on, perhaps as they emailed each other the next segment of the story. It's almost too much, a kind of cliff-hanger chapter ending that breaks the reader's suspension of disbelief, and thus became stopping points in my reading, not cliff hangers to move forward with. However, it was a small thing, perhaps not worth the writing of this paragraph.
The dolphin, Azael, is a young female dolphin, orphaned from her pod during a human fishing expedition. Tayle is a human girl that is contacted by Azael, and becomes involved in an adventure to save the world. I have always felt strongly with Anthony about environmental issues and our interelationships with other animals and the biosphere. Are other animals people? This is a curious assumption in the story that has got me thinking. We have such difficulty with diversity in human society. We feel estranged and sometimes assaulted by those different than us. Perhaps the next societal evolution of humanity will be in recognizing sapience, such as in dolphins, but also horses, dogs, cats, and so on. Yet more than sapience, but the feeling sensitivities of other living creatures.
Dolfin Tayle shows a profound, and simple, sensitivity in portraying other animals, as well as children, in their experience. This is a strength of Anthony's work, but I find that the collaboration with J. R. Rain has only enhanced Anthony's writing and story telling. Alas, circumstances with Anthony's move to California, and difficulties in communcation, have led to their collaborative efforts having ceased.
I read the Open Road Integrated Media Amazon 2014 Kindle edition. I have no idea who did the cover illustration, design, (or clip art?). Star Man was begun in August 2013 (see the September 2013 newsletter), and was finished in 22 November 2013 as Aliena Too, after the collaboration with J. R. Rain, Dolfin Tayle.
Aliena is a sapient star fish, an alien from outer space that interacts with humans as a symbiant. Aliena helps a woman in Aliena Too to rescue her dying husband, except the tide turns: it is not the mind of the lover that is preserved, but the body. Can Aliena learn to love a new mind in her husband's body? Can she teach the host to know how to love her back?
The author's note indicates the possibility of a sequel about Aliena's child, but at least so far has not been written.
I read the Dreaming Big Publications paperback edition from 2018 with the somewhat saucy
cover art, by Niki Browning of Peculiar Perspective Design, of a shirtless man being embraced by
a seductive but off putting woman with long fingers and dangerous eyes. Relationships 6
was started in August 2013 with the stories Feral Femme
and Cuddling and Kissing
.
See the September 2013 newsletter. Relationships 6 was finished in December 2013. The
following stories are included:
Like previous efforts with his Relationships series, Anthony provides engaging,
character driven stories. Yes, sometimes they're salacious, but always entertaining, and always
with a conclusion that fits the story. I continue to enjoy this series, though I'm not sure if
this one is my favorite. The conclusion to Stress Club
didn't do it for me. It seemed to
ruin the salcious mystique, which was already a bit stretched. It was too close to a bad, wrong
ending. So far, Some Other Time
is my favorite of the stories, and based on the author's
real experience, though "based" might be better stated as imagined-from sixty years later.
Magicals
comes in second, though I'm not sure what I think about the conjecture around
the source of magic: perhaps it was just characters conjecturing.
Neris was begun in January 2014 and announced in the January 2014 newsletter regarding making notes. It was January, but I suspect some editing bled into February. After Neris, some short stories were written, and then the Xanth novel Isis Orb.
I read the 2016 Excessica Kindle edition. The cover art is green with a photo in the background of a waterfall, with a (presumably) nude woman in the foreground, sitting with her knees held to her chest. As with other electronic publications of this period, the cover art is unattributed.
Neris is the story of the male half-god son of the Old Man of the Sea, the Greek god Nereus, and his human mother. The beginning of the novel puts it right into the porn category, with a sex scene worthy of Pornucopia, but then settles down into a more common Anthony fantasy story. The theme is a worthy one: industrial polution and environmental sabotage due to greed.
As noted in the July 2016 HiPiers newsletter, there was supposed to be a sequel about Siphon, called Siphon's Soul, but I've not heard a word about it since.
Jack and the Giants is a collaboration with J. R. Rain, started in February of 2014.
See the March and April 2014 HiPiers newsletters. I read the J. R. Rain private press
paperback, with unattributed cover art of a castle and bean-stalk flourish around the title.
The jacket art has the title as Jack & the Giants, but the rest of the block (that is
the part of the book that is not the cover) is and
, which reflects the real title. I
suspect the ampersand was stylistic art to emphasize the word Jack
and the word
Giants
.
Jack and the Giants is a bit of a romp, not only in plot, but in each chapter seems to build up, or digress, depending on how you look at it, into new parts of the story. The fun really is in the beginning where Jack can't keep his eyes off the receptionist at his job, which he loses, and thus loses the hope that maybe she really had been interested in him. If fantasy were to be reality, they'd hook up and find a way to make that work. I can't tell whether this story suffers from the back-and-forth exchange of writing between the authors, a writing process that Anthony seemed to latch on to with The Caterpillar's Question. (Maybe I'm only imagining that this is how was done.) The romp, the what's-happening-next plot development, and some macabre fantasy elements are unified under this simple question: does the lovely receptionist and Jack get brought together and find a way to stay so?
See the April 2014 and January 2015 newsletters:
I read the Open Road Media 2016 hardcover edition with cover design by Sarah Kaplan. The illustrations continue to be unattributed. Are these clip art that's been arranged and inserted? Isis Orb was finished in June of 2014. This was right after Jack & the Giants (see the January 2015 newsletter). It is Xanth #40. The sequel is Ghost Writer in the Sky.
It seems this took nearly as long as Tor did with their 1.5-2 year publishing cycle. A HiPiers newsletter points out this was due to an argument over licensing: they wanted full copyright to be signed over. Anthony was ready to take Xanth elsewhere and move on from Open Road Integrated Media, but they must have worked it out.
Hapless is looking for love. He's also looking for how to defeat the irony of his magic talent: the capability to conjure musical instruments, none of which he knows how to play. The Good Magician Humphrey, with the talent of information, sends him to get an orb from the goddess Isis, who naturally doesn't want to give it up. To control the orb, a totem from each of the five forbidden regions of Xanth must be retrieved.
The initial idea was recorded 6 July 2014. Pira was developed in August and written in September 2014. I read the Excessica, Amazon Kindle, August 2016 edition with the typical unattributed cover art. The cover is a red background with the outline of a young woman, a blinding light eminating from her chest center, and an odd lace pattern around it.
One thing that is noted with Excessica is a lot of copyright licensing statements, this is a work of fiction, it's for adults only, the non-lawyerly "all rights reserved" legally meaningless statement, no copying, sharing, don't leave around minors, you will be sent to prison for even non-monetary infringement. How anti-fair-use Elizabethan. I agree with copyright benifiting author's, for a limited term, with fair use and public consideration. However, our post-1950s international copyright laws are a betrayal of our constitution's intent. For the record, every copy of Anthony's work I have is licensed, and I have followed copyright restrictions to the letter. Now that we've got that of the way.
Pira starts as the story of a precocious little girl who is older than she looks, who matures faster than her age, who falls in love too quickly with our protagonist, perhaps so she is not only post-pubescent (what is the point of her looking younger than her age, perhaps a plot thread as the story progresses), but of legal age (and perhaps functional propriety for the readers). Clearly, something is different about this girl, and her mother, and it is the unraveling of this difference that develops the plot.
I enjoyed the Judo scene from the chapter Judoka
. I imagine a Japanese dojo would be
more formal, but the description certainly matches those in the US. Takes me back to Anthony's
Jason Striker series. I like that he remembers that level of detail so many years later, having
been out of the dojo.
I read the FIDO publishing epub edition. See the June 2016 newsletter for the announcement. The author's note description has the idea notes begun 24 October 2014, started on 23 November, and finished three weeks later in December 2014, (see the January 2015 HiPiers newsletter, at the beginning, for the annoucement of its completion after Pira), and published in 2016. The cover is unattributed with a picture of a brick with three holes next to a framed picture of a brick with four holes. It also has the copyright notices similar to Pira's eXcessica edition. Is FIDO an imprint?
Noah's Brick is a child's story. Anthony is good with these. I really liked his Balook and Pandora Park, and Noah's Brick is on par with these. Following Anthon's penchent for naming that represents the character, Noah is a play on the the Biblical character. What seems like a fantasy turns into science fiction (or science fantasy as Anthony would likely prefer). He takes a couple of short cuts in explaining things away for the sake of the story pacing, but it works. Things are getting more dire with the environment, as predicted in the 1970s, and Anthony is becoming more urgent with his awareness of it in his writing.
I read the Open Road Media 2016 hardcover edition with cover design by Amanda Shaffer. This
book was finished in March of 2015 after Noah's Brick and some short stories (e.g.
Cuisine to Die For
). It is Xanth #41, written before
Lavabull. See the end of the October 2014 HiPiers newsletter for
the initial announcement.
A mysterious Mundane begins creating stories, innacted by the Night Colt during the day, that makes the inhabitants of Xanth carry out the stories, written in the sky. Meanwhile, other Mundanes find a portal into Xanth. That smells of the demons to me, but is it?
I read the eXcessica epub novella, published April 2016. The author's note indicates the idea is from the beginning of 2015, started in March, and finished in April with 32,000 words. (See the April and May 2015 and June 2016 newsletters.)
An 18 year old son of a wealthy family is abducted for ransom. He falls in love with his 20-something female captor, persisting through her imprisonment, but the prologue makes clear there's more going on here.
The first thing that stands out is an 18-year-old might talk like this with a high-school education if exposed to a deeper vocabulary and education, but a mid-20s female without a high-school education will not. This is an occasional problem for Anthony, where his writing style and the communication style of his characters are too similar, though perhaps I miss it more often as it isn't obvious until I'm immersed and don't notice. Captive caught me early on, and was enough that to have suspension-of-disbelief required imagining the dialogue as paraphrasing or description not what was actually said. The first chapter explains a rehearsed dialogue, but even that in the prison scene didn't gel with the prison environment that dialogue would require. This seems like a discontinuity that breaks reading immersion.
As the story progresses, it fits in with the Relationships erotic themed stories, though perhaps this one was too big for that collection. It seems like a frat boy's day dreaming, being kidknapped by a more than willing woman. The use of rotating flash back chapters reminds me of Anthony's first novel Chthon, which had a complicated three rotating flash forward, present, flash back, sequence that rotated by approaching the present in the center of the novel then passing it by and reversing back and forward again, except this is much, much simpler, and easy to follow.
See the June 2015 newsletter:
Written around Captive, Lavabull was started March 2015, and finished May 2015. Instead of a J. R. Rain imprint, Lavabull was originally published by Crop Circle Books in 2015, which is the edition I read. See the April, May, and June 2015 HiPiers newsletters. In the May newsletter is confirmation of the every other chapter writing. Their next collaboration after Lavabull is The Worm Returns.
Anthony and J. R. Rain seem to be playing with differing genre types, this one being a super hero novel about a shape shifting lava girl, and a minotaur-like half-bull. They hook up and become a superhero team. All they want to do is help people. I suspect a romance too.
As a note, at one point Anthony describes a computer logic gate. Yes, he prefaces it by saying it's a vague understanding, and I think that preface has merit, even if it's blamed on the character's vagueness. However, a logic gate is not like a traffic light exactly. It's a counter. It's a fundamental building block of how the computer stores data, whether in a register, memory, or cold storage. It controls the flow of electric current. When it's on, it closes the gate, when off it opens it. After all, a computer is a sophisticated calculator. This provides a binary count of 0 and 1 (or 1 and 2). Two logic gates can thus store four numbers 0-3, (this doubled collection is sometimes called a nibble, or half a byte, where a byte's word size is 8 bits or 4 logic gates). I myself may have a vague understanding, not being an electrical engineer, but that is what came to mind reading this part of the book.
I read the Dreaming Big Publications 2017 paperback, with cover art by Mitchell Davidson
Bentley titled The Good, the Bat & the Ugly
. It was first mentioned in the August 2015
HiPiers newsletter, so perhaps was finished in July 2015? The sequel is
Amazon Expedient.
Virtue Inverted is sword and sorcery fantasy, and might have made an interesting TTRPG framework. The multi-effect vampire bite lends an interesting change from the typical blood sucking immortal walking dead concept. It took me a bit to get into this novel, but it turned out OK. It's not Kelly's first novel, but his follow-up attempt. Anthony asked about it after reading his existing novel, and offered to help.
I read the Dreaming Big Publications 2016 paperback with cover art by Mac Hernandez. The first notes were drafted 6 April 2015, a more complete summary written in May, then the first draft started 13 August and finished two weeks later. Hair Power was written in August 2015 entire, after the collaboration Virtue Inverted (which was finished after Lavabull). Hair Power is the first novella in a trilogy, though that was not originally planned. The sequel is Hair Suite.
An alien hair ball saves a suicidal young cancer patient from death. The alien is telepathic and becomes a symbiant with her to save her, but it wants something in return. This is a fun, saucy fantasy. It reminds me a little bit of Aliena.
Amazon Expedient is the sequel to Virtue Inverted, a
collaboration with Kenneth Kelly, labeled as book II of the Pakk Series (though as far as I
know it's a trilogy, and never went further). I am reading the 2018 Dreaming Big Publications
paperback edition, with cover art by Mitchel Bentley of Atomic Fly Studios: Amazon
Detente
. Amazon Expedient is mentioned in the November 2015 HiPiers newsletter, so I
suspect was finished in early October.
I read Virtue Inverted in the Fall of 2018. Starting Amazon Expedient over seven years later was a bit jarring. The first confusion was figuring out what a Pawben was. Pawben is introduced in the Preface and Epilogue of the first book. The first hint is he is a male human, who likes to smoke a pipe, who was remembering the Virtue story. Leafing through Virtue Inverted the Pawben doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere else until the Epilogue, hinting at the events of Chapter 13, suggest that he is Benny, our protagonist, remembering the adventures he had, but recollected centuries later. I also couldn't find mention of the tortoise, which seems to be mentioned out-of-the-blue in Virtue Inverted's Epilogue. The little boy is Dale's grandson, whom the Pawben had promised Dale's son to watch after. There's also hints that the Pawben is a traveler between realms of existence. Virtue Inverted ends with a pet rat who is named Flack, and whom the boy wants the story of the original Flack as they make way for the tortoise's house. This is where Amazon Expedient picks up.
I didn't pick up on it with Virtue Inverted, but is Kenneth Kelly a Pathfinder adventure gamer? Maybe my D&D and Pathfinder interests made me see feats and character class similarities, but this read like a simpler Dragonlance story. Amazon Expedient struck me as two story arcs in a campaign, the first moving towards a tournament, and the second a rising storm toward dominating the land of Pakk with war. It seems I picked up on the reveal towards the end of the story early on. It wasn't a spoiler, but predictable for those used to this kind of story. My kind of junk, as Anthony might say.
See the November and December 2015 newsletters:
I read the eXcessica publishing, September 2016 Amazon Kindle epub, with obnoxious
copyright notices (yes, that's plural), and unattributed cover art. Though I've ragged on
eXcessica's epubs, I do have to note that their copyediting seems to be solid, the epubs are
readable, don't have many mistakes from sloppy reliance on computer grammar and spelling
checkers, and have good, traditional paragraph separation and modern sentence spacing, and
the sexy THE END!
page with the back of a topless woman holding her rear in tight jeans
makes me smile each time.
See the November and December 2015, and January 2016, HiPiers newsletters. The June 2016 newsletter mentions Soul of the Cell as being published, but without indication when it was finished.
Soul of the Cell seems to be one of the more obscure of Anthony's short novels. As with much Anthony has written in his self-publishing (and small or independent publishing) period, there's a lot of sex involved. However, this one rang true to its use in the story, being a critical part of it, not a mere distraction for entertainment. Soul of the Cell has hints of Anthony's earlier science fiction. Liberally educated adults are offered a chance at a project for a year's living wage, but they must behave as couples, randomly selected, with a final expected culmination. To what end?
The Worm Returns is a collaboration with J. R. Rain, written during the writing of Soul of the Cell. I read the Crop Circle Books 2016 publication, the same imprint started with Lavabull, but with unattributed cover art of a gunslinger shooting at the reader, the bullet shown in mid-flight, over the background of a 19th century western US town. See the December 2015 HiPiers newsletter for the announcement, and the January 2016 newsletter for the submission draft read through making it the last thing written in 2015. Mentioned were two other projects in that newsletter, but it's not clear what, possibly The Worm Returns being one of them?
The Worm Returns is about the gunslinger Bad Buffalo that shoots a magical sprite's acorn. The sprite realizes that Buffalo's sharp shooter accuracy can help her to save the Earth from the loss of magic. So she recruits him to shoot the worm holes closed that allow the eaters of magic through to Earth. The adventure goes from there, until Buffalo realizes that her influence on him is having a good affect on his attitude. I had fun with this story, its humor, and light, unique take on fantasy. J. R. Rain is a good callaborator for/with Anthony.
I read the Open Road Integrated Media first edition with a picture of an older woman and a young man standing on clouds looking at a firey part of the sky in the shape of a sail, illustrated and designed by Amanda Shaffer. Fire Sail was finished in April 2016, the first draft finished in March, but not published until 2019.
An aging woman, feeling past her prime, and a young man, feeling hopeless for love, find each other as they traverse the tests needed to enter the Magician of Information's castle. In typical fashion, the magician orders them on a quest to deliver a magic sail boat to its owner. Thing is, they don't know the owner, and what does that have to do with their questions? Certainly a typical Xanth. I detect some wrapping up of loose ends since the switch of publishers to Open Road Media, as well as a more relaxed style. This was enjoyable at the beginning, coasted a bit for awhile in the plot, and then warmed up as the story passed its xenith (spelling intended).
I read the Dreaming Big Publications 2016 paperback, with cover art by Macario Hernandez III. Service Goat was written in June and July of 2016. My print edition is dated 6 December 2016. This is a novella, similar in size to Writer's Retweet, Hair Power, and Odd Exam, and seems to be Anthony's new (old original?) normal. See the July 2016 newsletter. It appears to have been finished after Fire Sail.
This is what Anthony would describe as science fantasy, though he has much more rigid standards for what makes up science fiction, though this one might count for what he'd disparingly call SciFi. Service Goat is about a goat with mysterious powers. It also has alien UAPs. (The terminology has since changed, so that an unidentified flying object (UFO) is now unidentified anomalous or aerial phenomenon, with the new acronym UAP.) A blind girl, Caladia, the victim of a freak car accident, that turns out to have been an alien space craft. It too, for the same freak reason, crashes. The aliens want to explore Earth and need a willing human to help. It's a fun, light, quick read.
I read the Dreaming Big Publications 2016 paperback with cover art by Mac Hernandez. It was finished in August 2016. This is the second book of a trilogy. The conclusion is Hair Peace. See the July and August 2016 newsletters for more details. Hair Suite appears to have been finished after Service Goat.
The Hair Balls have set up an embassy. Now another alien species, a kind of cyborg called the Chip Monks, wants to conquer Earth, and the Hair Balls intend to save it. Yeah, it's kinda silly, and typical Anthony saucy.
Magenta Salvation appears to have been finished in August
2016, see the September 2016 HiPiers newsletter, and the submission
draft in October. It was written after
Hair Suite. I am reading the Dreaming Big
Publications 2019 (first edition?) paperback, with cover art, Spin
Magic Vision
, by Mitchell Davidson Bentley.
See the December 2016 newsletter:
Self Image was originally a short story, expanded in to Novella. It is mentioned as complete in the January 2017 HiPiers newsletter. It's unclear when the original story was written, as it was not published. The novella is ultimately published in Relationships 8, being unpublished elsewhere.
The Journey, is the last collaboration with J. R. Rain. It is mentioned as in progress in the January and Feb 2017 HiPiers newsletters, finished in February. I plan to read this after Magenta Salvation.
The February 2017 newsletter is the one where I'm mentioned in context of a conversation regarding Jesus' existence. I've read and subscribed to The Humanist before, and it seems like a regular thing to try and wipe out the existence of the human being in the midst of denying his divinity. Though it is certainly possible that Jesus is a legend based on the wild imaginings and experiences of later generations, but it seems far more likely that the resurrection experience (whether or not that experience was materially real) was related by those who actually knew the man at one point. I suspect the story is real, but understand too that historicity by arguable secondary sources is suspect.
As to the collaborations with Rain, there was the beginnings of another story, later reported in the February 2020 HiPiers newsletter, but this is where Anthony's communication becomes irregular, following the death of his wife, and finally ceases work with other collaborators, of which Rain was the last.
I read the Mannison Press February 2021 first edition paperback, with
cover illustrations by Deidre J Owen and
pixabay.com. Walk the Walk
was
first published in Little Girl Lost: Thirteen Tales of Youth
Disrupted in 2019. Ride the Ride
was published in Little
Boy Lost: More Tales of Youth Disrupted in 2020. Ride the
Ride is mentioned in the Jun 2020 HiPiers newsletter. These were
both Mannison Press collections. The final story Fly the Fly
is
unique to this volume, finished in February 2021.
A girl meets a skeleton and becomes friends. A boyish man becomes friends with a ghost. All three finally become linked together.
©2022-2025 David Egan Evans.