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Fantasy. Fiction. Science Fiction. Thriller. HTML:In this brilliantly satisfying conclusion to the epic adventure begun in Split Infinity and continued in Blue Adept, Piers Anthony again proves himself a consummate master of both science fiction and fantasy. Stile had problems�??two whole worlds of problems, in fact. On Proton, a world of future science, his murder was averted only by the help of a lovely robot, who sent him through an invisible �??curtain�?� to Phaze, an alternate world ruled by magic. There he found he was the double of the sorcerer, the Blue Adept, who had been mysteriously murdered. And the assassin was after Stile! To survive, Stile had to master magic, fight a dragon, win the friendship of a lady unicorn, locate his enemy among the paranoid Adepts, and return out of Phaze to win the Great Games on Proton. After that, he was ready to face the real problems! The infallible Oracle was suddenly involved in the conspiracy a… (more)
User reviews
Anthony is not content to state a premise of 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.
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 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.