Juxtaposition

Always kinda liked this series, a bit of a guilty pleasure; re-read it recently with a certain nostalgia. I felt the protagonist's adventures in the scientific world of Proton were a lot more compelling than his adventures in the magical world, since as an Adept he had the power to basically wish for anything he wanted in Phaze. I enjoyed his climb through the Tourney and up the ranks of the Citizenry, I liked the robot equal rights subplot, and I liked the book's ending.

Juxaposition is definitely the best of the initial trilogy. The pace is very fast, with satisfying, significant events happening regularly. Stile-as-Citizen is delightful - some of the gambling scenes are better than any of the previous Game scenes. And while Stile's rigid morality gets tiresome, it is, at least, internally consistent, and the deux ex machina that insures everyone gets a happy ending is better than marginally plausible.

The rampant sexism gets no better - Stile still has every woman he meets drooling after him, to ridiculous lengths, and while Sheen at least has better things to do for most of the book than swoon, she does manage to work in some significant swooning in her spare moments. The Citizens' culture seems about show more as patriarchal as it gets - the women go for medical/surgical beauty improvements while the men are content to be fat slobs, which would only be mildly eyebrow-raise-worthy if it wasn't explained as "The vanity of women caused them to go this route." In a book describing a male-gaze paradise, that was almost enough to cause me to throw the book across the room.

This was originally the end of the trilogy, and it's a perfectly good end, for what it is - the additional four books are definitely only for the faithful. I loved these when I was a kid, but man, I'm not sure I can even justify the shelf space for them any more. show less

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 show more 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. show less

On the planet Proton, science works and magic doesn't, but juxtaposed with this world is another frame, that of Phaze, where magic works, but science doesn't. This is powered by a mineral called Protonite or Phazite depending on which frame you are in, and the Protonite mining of it is endangering the balance of both frames. Stile has been prophesied to ameliorate this destruction, but many powerful people in both frames are out to stop him, denying the destabilization and wanting to maintain their present status. What Stile must accomplish, jumping back and forth between frames, is enough work for ten men. How he manages it all will keep the reader on the edge of his or her seat throughout.
Anthony is not content to state a premise of show more this complexity without asking the difficult questions. Many authors would rely on a statement like "magic works" without feeling it necessary to explain. Anthony's world, and it's backstory, contain logical explanations for the fantastic occurrences therein. World-building does not come at the expense of characters, either. Stile's honor, incorruptibility, and personal development have converged to make him uniquely qualified for his task. Sheen the self-aware robot struggles with her inability to be "real" and her desire to be loved. Even more secondary characters such as Clef, Merle, and Trool have their own internal conflicts and personal evolving to do.
I really can't recommend this series enough, particularly if you can't decide whether you prefer science fiction to fantasy. There is quite enough of both to satisfy you. show less

The third in the series finally separates the two worlds. There is one item that truly irritated me throughout Juxtaposition. In the other novels it is quite secret that Stiles can shift between the two worlds, but in the third everybody and his brother knows all the details of Stiles journey back and forth. If it wasn't for Anthony's excellent action writing and creative game elements, I probably would have tossed it aside. It still amazes me this series hasn't been done in at least film or Anime format.

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.

Something about Pier Anthony series always seem to find me slogging my way through to finish the last book. Yes, I know that he wrote more after this one, but I barely remember that I might have read Out of Phaze. I certainly didn't read any of the others. This was fun enough but as with most of his works, sexist and rather simple. Anyway, it's the last of the Adepts for me in my Year of Nostalgic Rereads...