In retrospect, even I don’t believe that I read so many Piers Anthony books.
Of all of his various series, Anthony’s INCARNATIONS OF IMMORTALITY series is probably the one that felt coolest to me, when I read it in 6-7th grade. I remember my friend Luke raving about these books, and that was enough for me.
The premise to the series is that there are these essentially immortal godlike… ideas that are more like job functions than characters, because various mortal human beings inhabit those job functions throughout all of time. So you’ve got things like Death, Love, Good, Evil, and War. The coolest thing about the books (apart from Death driving around in his “pale horse” that could turn into a sweet car) was their interconnectedness. The books weren’t entirely sequential, and often overlapped in their plots, which meant that certain inexplicable actions by some characters were clarified in later books when you could read the same scene from a different perspective. (In retrospect, reminds me a lot of Grant Morrison’s SEVEN SOLDIERS series, actually.)
To my mind, the first book in the series, ON A PALE HORSE, was the best and coolest, with probably the most likable character. The one about Time was pretty sweet as well.
WIELDING A RED SWORD is all about the incarnation of War. I remember very little of this book, otherwise, unfortunately. I’m pretty sure Death makes an appearance.
What’s amazing is that Piers Anthony is still alive and, as far as I can tell, still writing! As for his Xanth books, I’m sure I’ll get around to writing about at least one of those at some point soon. I did read so very very many of them…