I really enjoyed this series when it first came out. The whole concept of the game, the society, and the parallel magic world was fascinating. The characters are good, but simple, and the plots are challenging, without being overly convoluted. Good reading. ( )

Pretty tedious. I dropped this series here. ( )

Somewhere, I once read that Piers Anthony's Xanth books are great... but only when you're twelve. Well, I enjoyed Xanth when I was twelve but haven't read it since; I also enjoyed Anthony's series The Apprentice Adept, about a world of magic and a world of science coexisting side-by-side, but I only read the first two. I happened up this, the third volume, when going through the books of my mother's friend's late brother, and I decided to give it a spin, for old-times' sake. It's not very good. The concept is great, but it's totally squandered in a pretty mundane fashion here, where both worlds are treated with about as much sense of the fantastic as a trip to the grocery store. And good grief, but Stile is pretty much the most irritatingly perfect protagonist of all time: half of all women love him, all the ones who don't still want to bed him, all the other men bow to his prowess, and he's the best at everything he's ever tried, ever, from music to swordfighting to politics to poetry to magic to finance to games of random chance. Which makes for an exceedingly dull book.

The third book in the "Apprentice Adept" series (and i think the first trilogy is the best~perhaps Anthony is just a bit TOO prolific if that's possible~or maybe i'm just jealous~not that i can even get one novel out) Anyway, finishes up the first third nicely. ( )

While I do not love Piers Anthony's literary promiscuity, this series is clever and well-written and is a nice blend of fantasy and science fiction. The characters are rather fun, overall. ( )