I first read this series many years ago when it was originally published. While there were most definitely aspects I felt did not stand up to the test of time in general I did enjoy re-reading this series. The characters have very clear points they are trying to portray and I like the scienc"ish" bits in it. ( )

Colene, Darius, and the magnificent telepathic horse Sequiro, travelling companions from Virtual Mode and Fractal Mode, face their most dangerous adventure ever as they pass freely from one universe to the next. They are joined by a most unlikely companion: Burgess, a tentacled creature from a world where evolution went entirely differently from the path it took for us. And their travels take them to a place that in some ways is the strangest of all - a place called Earth.

Enjoyed it enough to want to go on to the next. Note: 2018 - I finally got the last book Do0on Mode and haven't read it yet. I remember having it on my wish list for a long time and then letting it drop off. I was reading Incarnations (off my shelves) and then did some research on Piers and found that he did finally write the fourth one so I checked and now it is on my Kindle. I have all his books in paperback but I ran out of shelf space. ( )

Piers Anthony is a very creative author, and his fantasy stories tend to stray from the cliches that make most fantasy novels so similar. His writing style is awfully clunky, though, and could use more editing for grammar and 'flow'. He also tends to dive into stories with too little background context, especially in mid-series novels, so that if you have not read the previous volume in a while, or if you have never read any other books in the series, it may take 1/3 of the book or more just to figure out enough of the story to not feel hopelessly lost. I suspect that if you start reading this series from the very beginning, it might be more engaging, but I had a very hard time getting through this book. I found the characters unrealistic, and the dialogue almost always felt fake and stilted. The story itself, once you get past the writing style and storytelling issues, is pretty cool, enough to earn a 3 star rating from me, but I wish this book had had a tougher editor. ( )

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