The combined magic and technology between the parallel worlds of Phaze and Proton is not enough to save the planets from a conquering invasion. Only Mach and Bane--robot and wizard, linked between worlds--have any chance of stopping this threat.
Though he spent the first four years of his life in England, Piers never returned to live in his country of birth after moving to Spain and immigrated to America at age six. After graduating with a B.A. from Goddard College, he married one of his fellow students and and spent fifteen years in an assortment of professions before he began writing fiction full-time.
Piers is a self-proclaimed environmentalist and lives on a tree farm in Florida with his wife. They have two grown daughters.
I've really only got myself to blame. Like Piers Anthony himself, I really struggle to let a series go. Unicorn Point is the sixth book of seven, in what was supposed to be a trilogy. I'm not necessarily expecting to love these anymore, but I am determined to finish the series. As the previous novels have dealt with Stile and Blue, then their sons Mach and Bane. This one switches to the grandchildren: Flach and Nepe. Their parents (who we remember have promised to work for the bad citizens and adepts because their parents wouldn't bless their unions with a jelly-like alien and a unicorn) believe them to be borderline retarded as they aren't developing as expected.
However, at the ripe old age of four, they are actually convinced by their grandparents (Stile and Blue) to go into hiding so that their powers (oh yes, they have secret powers, they can communicate with each other across the two realms whenever they want – nobody else has noticed though) can develop without being used by the bad citizens and adepts. At the age of four! At that tender age they are able to form complex political opinions, keep secrets from their own parents about their abilities, are smart enough to have always done so without getting noticed up until then, and to top it all are able to create and action their own, totally self-sufficient, escape plans and stay undetected for a number of years.
As is the style these days (1989?) the chapters rotate through a number of PoV characters. Each taking turns to narrate the story. This would be fine if Anthony could just shake this habit of having each character reminisce extensively about the events of the previous chapters and books. It's massively annoying and he needs to stop it. This book could easily have been about half the size if Anthony just cut out all the repetition. And the weirdly creepy bestiality and rape obsessions.
Finally, the book just stops. It doesn't really end. Although one side has technically won, , it's not clear what that means for any of the characters. We don't know how the balance of power is affected between the good guys and bad guys in each realm, or how the balance between the two realms is affected. I can only assume that this is Anthony putting something aside for the final novel...
1. The kids are wildly implausible and a little bit irritating. When they're introduced, they're four years old, yet capable of executing masterful escape plots that require them to have extensive skills and knowledge. The only concession to their age is that Nepe talks in an "adorable" mushmouthed fashion, albeit with the same or greater vocabulary and sentence structure as everyone else. And yet both kids' parents mysteriously think their kids are developmentally delayed somehow.
2. Tania has been a classic sociopathic villain up til now, and in fact is the instigator of a really creepy coerced sexual encounter (rape scene #1!) but then she falls in love and is magically transformed into a good, ethical sympathetic person. But she can't have her love, because he's taken, so when she meets another random powerful man, she transfers that affection to him wholesale in about ten seconds. Man, that was a deep and powerful emotion... or something.
3. Yet more Games. Jesus, come on, man. Again, not poorly executed, but the stakes are higher every time and therefore the use of contests seems less and less plausible every time. Also it has officially Gotten Old.
4. The rape scenes. Seriously, the second half of the book is nothing but. Female character forced to tell a rape joke with herself as the victim to a live audience. Absolutely appalling surrogate rape "game." Goblin rape, multiple counts. Threatened child rape. I am not the most fragile flower about this stuff, but this was just gross - and certainly the rampant sexism throughout the series does not earn Anthony any leeway on this topic.
I am glad I finished this reread, because these were books I cared about when I was a kid, but... I'm finished. These aren't going to be taking up space on my shelves any longer. (Yes, there's one more book in the series. It's so bad that I didn't even bother adding it to my collection in the first place. Skip it!)
I haven't read this series in ages, and I forgot a lot of it. It might just be that I was in a cranky mood when I read it this time, but man. For such an engaging story, I really hate the way female characters come across. From an emphasis on their "vanity" that supersedes almost all of their other attributes, to a pretty intense rape scene in a game sequence, it's really not a fun series for the ladies.
I also hate that the women are all lovely and pretty while many of the males are physically unattractive, but they end up together anyway. This wouldn't bug me so much if there were even one plain girl who ended up with a hot guy, but the constant emphasis on how women don't care so much about their mate's appearance while that's all men care about grates on my last nerve.
SIGH. I hate when a good story or well executed tv show or movie or whatever pushes such blatent sexism. I don't expect a perfect artistic world of feminist values, but geez it gets old when all I see are annoying stereotypes. Maybe these books are just suffering by getting caught in my current run of media with lousy female portrayls, but I'm pretty sure I won't be re-reading the last book in this series for a while.
Anthony does make a couple of decisions that don't make sense. However, overall this was a good novel. The Games are described really well. The ending won't work for everyone, but I thought it was satisfying.
You know Piers Anthony just keeps adding in more and more crucial characters that are able to cross frames. I am just amazed with his skill in keeping his characters straight and keeping my interest in all of them. Usually if an author just keeps adding characters, I get bored with them really fast. Game of Thrones, for example, had waaaayyyy too many characters in it. I got to the point where I would only read the chapters with my favorite characters (Jon, Arya, Tyrion, Danaerys) and skip all of the others. But Anthony seems to know that I like to read about the original characters through the stories of their offspring. I love it. This book didn't focus so much on the Game, as the other books did but there is a spin off that was just awesome for the Phaze side of things. Fun! fun! Oh! And just get super excited right now for the plot twist at the end of this book. I cant wait until I get the next one in my hands. Five out of five stars for Unicorn Point!
Description from book The combined magic and technology between the parallel worlds of Phaze and Proton is not enough to save the planets from a conquering invasion. Only Mach and Bane - robot and wizard, linked between worlds - have any chance of stopping this threat.
my review: I liked this series a lot. Unicorn point is the 6th book in the Apprentice Adept series. I didn't like this one quite as well as I liked the earlier books in the series but still a great fantasy/science fiction work.
I enjoy Piers Anthony's writing style and characters. This is not my favorite book or series of his but I do still quite enjoy it and I would recommend it.
Why did I read so many Piers Anthony books 14 September 2013
It is really annoying that when I write some things it tends to just come flowing out of my head, while at other times my brain freezes up and I simply do not know what to write (I think they call it writer's block). This is not so much the case with book reviews or other forms of writing, but more when it comes to something like communications with other people or trying to start an email conversation. It is a completely different style of writing and I guess a style with which I am going to have to learn to adapt.
As for this book, there is pretty much nothing that I wish to write about, though I would like the explore the idea of sex and marriage a bit. I'm not really sure if I actually read this book, and once again I'm not really sure why I actually read so many Piers Anthony books in the first place. Maybe it was because they were readily available, and a little familiar, however I have found his writings in recent years to be somewhat lame, especially compared to other writers to which I have been exposed.
Now I mentioned previously the concept of the sexual revolution and how Anthony does not seem to get the idea in any of his writings. It appears that this comes out a lot in Bio of a Space Tyrant as well as this series. In a way there seems to be this obsession not only with sex but with promiscuity. From following the characters there seems to be little in the way of acknowledgement of faithfulness to a single partner. I wonder if this comes across in Anthony's life as well. I must admit that one of the stories that I have been writing in the past (but having put it on hold due to aspects of the story being a bit too much for some people) that the main character was somewhat promiscuous and parts of it could be considered erotic. Unfortunately, the problem is that I am still writing from a male point of view, and a point of view that seems to treat women as objects, though I have not looked my particular story for a few years now.
I was speaking with a friend the other day about prostitution in the Bible, and about how the presence of a Temple of Aphrodite in Corinth seemed to necessitate Paul writing against prostitution in his letter to the Corinthains. As my friend suggested it was not only adultery but also idolatry that Paul was writing against. However what exactly is adultery? The funny thing is that the Bible never really gives us a definition. The same goes with sexual immorality – what exactly is it? The Bible does drop a number of hints, including orgies and homosexuality as falling under this category, but what is the extent. Many have said (and quite rightly so) that we should not be drawing lines in the sand and seeing how close we can get without crossing it. However true that may be, on the other side we really should not be drawing lines that put people on the otherside and then condemning them as such.
The definition of adultery is vague though. Is it having sex with somebody who you are not married to when you are married, or is your marital status irrelevant? It could go both ways. However the best idea I heard was that it has to do with breaking faith with a partner. Adultery does not necessarily involve sex, but could simply refer to lying to your partner, or more so breaking an oath. One of the oaths in marriage is that we will remain sexually faithful to each other, and to go back on that not only makes you an oathbreaker, it also brings distrust into the marriage. That, I believe, is what adultery is (especially since it is the only commandment in the Ten Commandments that deals with oathbreaking).
"Unicorn Point" is the 6th and final book of Piers Anthony's "Apprentice Adept" series. Or so I thought. In my rush to wrap up trilogies and other series this month, I hadn't realized that there is actually a 7th book in this series. I don't own it but have seen it in the book store in years past. Not so suprising that I hadn't realized it though when you consider that Piers Anthony is an extremely prolific author with 140 books published to date.
Mr Anthony is somewhat infamous for cramming 6-7 novels in each of his "trilogies". Many people think the first three make a fine trilogy and then he proceeds to write more and thus ruin the series. His Xanth series alone started as a trilogy and is still going strong after 34 books. I tend to agree but am such a completest that I feel obligated to read the entire series. This particular series, the "Apprentice Adept" series is among my favorite, expecially the first three. The concept is very cool: a world that has a fantasy region called "Phaze" as well as a science region called "Proton." Magic works in Phaze whereas Proton is very science fictiony. Turns out the two regions were split from a single region sometime in the past and even the people have duplicates in the other region. Thus a magical "adept" in Phaze has a corresponding citizen or serf in Proton. But when one person accidentally enters the other zone...well you can imagine what sorts of chaos might develop.
This is definitely one of Mr Anthony's series that should have been limited to three books. Those first three novels, beginning with "Split Infinity" formed a tightly woven and complete story with well developed characters and compelling plot. They remain among my favorite fantasy novels. However, his attempt at a follow-on trilogy largely fails in my opinion. The new characters are mostly lifeless, and very similar to one another. They even think the same way and have the same attitudes (something I've noticed for many of this author's characters). The plot is overly complicated and confusing making the entire reading experience an onerous one. There are just enough intriguing parts to keep me on the hook and continuing to the next novel but overall I wished the author had pursued other stories. That probably explains why it took me 2 1/2 years between reading book 5 and book 6. This book, "Unicorn Point" is divided into 18 chapters, each with a different point of view character. That basically turns the book into 18 seperate vignettes that are intended to bring the entire story together. Instead it seperates the story and further complicates it. Take my advice and stop after the first three books in this series.
The first three books in this series were really, very good. Unfortunately, as it continued, less focus and attention was placed on consistency and plotting and more on the bodily and sexual practices of the various characters. Also, the Game, which seemed innovative and meaningful to the story in the beginning, became a lot less intriguing as outcomes from it were used to decide all manner of important situations. Would such powerful people be inclined to utilize such a method for deciding disagreements? It felt more and more unlikely as the stakes got higher. Particularly in this book, I felt the whole thing was just an excuse to play inter-species capture-the-flag and have some main female characters get raped. The latter, especially, I really didn’t approve of. I am sorely tempted not to even read the last book in the series, but I’m such a completist, I can’t really help it. Hopefully it’s more of a return to what attracted me to the series in the first place.
Once again, Bane and Mach feel restricted by their duty in helping the 'wrong' side of the Phaze/Proton war, but no-one thought that their children would be able to fight against them. Nepe, a half alien, half robot, and Flach, half unicorn, half Adept, run away and hide in ther appropriate worlds, so that their grandfathers can halt the progress of the Adverse Adepts/Contrary Citizans. For the two children can also communicate across the frames. But when the two children are caught, it once again is down to the Game to decide the winner. But the result is a surprise to all.
This was more enjoyable than the last book, as the children's story brings a fresh twist to these dual worlds. I liked the fact that 18 separate view points are used to tell the tale, although it did mean that the story jumped around a bit. Still, I am looking forward to reading the last book to see how it all ends.
If I could I'd ask for my money back if the last book keeps going the way this one with unnecessary rape scenes I may end up tossing it without making it to the end. I was kind of liking this series but the sex crap is just pushing all the wrong buttons and annoying the hell out of me and the alluded rapes were just not needed to make the story work and just disgusting and the beginning of child molestation just pushed it way over the edge. Piers Anthony ruined the Xanth series with the same problems with his need to have sex in his books and goes over the line to the point where a person is forced to toss the rest of the series. I had decided to give him another chance now I'm not so sure I want to try his other series that I have.
Is there a lot of sexism in Anthony's work? Well … yeah. But it's equal opportunity sexism. He's as appalling in his attitude to male characters as his female characters. And in the books I've read by him, his female characters, vain though they may be, are often his most badass characters, as well as often the most pivotal characters. He's still a great storyteller and I invite anyone to bring me a single storyteller, nay human, that does not have some trait or attitude or characteristic that is at least somewhat appalling to a large number of people.
That said, the rape scene was horrifying and not so much for it's graphic descriptions, but in his casual treatment of it. It seemed gratuitous, in spite of it being storyline. He really needed to edit that one a hell of a lot more.
I read this book sometime in the 1980s. Like many of Piers Anthony's series, the first three books in this series were outstanding - a unique idea, interesting, and fun to read. However, by this point the ideas behind the series were being recycled and the same basic plot was being reused over and over again in these later books. If you enjoy the first books in the Apprentice Adept series, do yourself a favor and stop after book 3.
Ok...Unless you like digging through bad writing to be entertained by the plot do not read this book...It is a prime candidate for someone to re-write/imagine. The story is solid and keept me reading but the style of writing made it very hard. I do not quit books, this one almost got set aside...but again the plot/story was solid enough I might find the first in the series and give it a try...but I am an idiot.
I loved the first three books in the series so I continued forward.... fast forward 6 months and I'm regretting my decision to read past the first trilogy. The story line is the same one as it moves on. However, I'm not a quitter so I will finish the series and hopefully not want to poke my eyeballs out.
I have literally lost all semblance of following this plot line. There are children from the last two couples from the last book. They act dumb but aren’t, but no one knows that? They are borderline Mary Sues - telepathic, shapeshifters, adepts. It's ridiculous.