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> Piers Anthony is a maddening author. I know he can write. He's not a great writer, but at his best, he's good. The trouble is, the vast majority of the time he churns out stupid junk (at the insane rate of four books a year, or at least it used to be that fast), with the most nauseatingly elitist authors notes (some of them longer than the story that preceeds it) tacked onto the end. I gave up on him quite some time ago and have little desire to return.

Uhlg! I read only one book ever that he had a finger in, called "If I Pay Thee Not in Gold." I believe I mentioned it in a previous post. This bit of garbage has me holding my nose even two months later. First of all, Piers Anthony didn't write it. Mercedes Lackey did. From Piers Anthony's ridiculously long author's note at the end I pieced together that Lackey had written the story from his concept. That's perfectly reasonable. So he gets a royalty, and his name on the book somewhere. It should say something like "adapted from a concept of Piers Anthony's creation" on the dedication. Nope. Anthony's name is not only on the cover in large embossed print (I bought the hardcover version cheap at a bargain table.) but it comes FIRST!

Maybe it's just me. I'm a teenager just out of middle school and may be ignorant about these things. I still think that's rude.

The second thing that got me mad was that our egotistical author insisted on editing the book, wedging totally unneeded characters wherever they may fit. In most cases where they don't.

I haven't even said anything about how bad the part Lackey wrote was. Take my word for it, this book is painful. The book is progressing in a pretty snail-like fasion up to a certain point, when the characters have to go on a quest to find a magic crystal shard to pay a debt. It's as if Lackey noticed that the story was slowly killing itself. If you value your thought processes, do NOT read this book.

Sorry, Rinkworks and Rinkworks readers. This was supposed to be a short and to the point paragraph on how Piers Anthony stomped on a story that was strangling itself anyway. Didn't mean to write a book review.

Sus"Now that I've written it, I may as well post it"an