Summary: Colene is walking home from school, and discovers a strange man collapsed in a ditch. They learn how to communicate and Darius brings her a story of a land where magic reigns. She assumes that he’s crazy and when he’s able to travel back to his own dimension, she realizes that he was telling the truth the whole time. How can she get back together with him?
Setting: Starts in Oklahoma in the 1980’s, includes travel to other dimensions.
Plot: Colene is a 14 year old high school student. She’s popular enough but she’s got some significant issues, among them that she’s suicidal, and her parents marriage is a sham. Her father is a philanderer, her mother is a practicing alcoholic. She meets Darius, a king from another dimension, when he’s beat up by hoods in her neighborhood. She nurses him back to health in secret and he tells her of his mission – to find an appropriate queen. We already know that Colene wouldn’t be appropriate for his purposes, but they fall in love anyway; at least he does. She think's he’s crazy, but accepts his story for something to grasp onto and believe in. He finds out that she’s suicidal, and that she wouldn’t meet the qualifications to be the queen (because of her negative attitude), so he decides to return to his home dimension (with her help) and try finding a queen another way. His leaving demonstrates to Coleen that he was telling the truth, and cements her feelings for him. Unfortunately, she’s separated from him by virtue of being dimensions away.
Darius returns to his home dimension, and finds a way that he and Colene can be together, so he sets up a method of joining their dimensions so that they can join back up. Colene is eager to get out, and grasps on the opportunity to reunite with Darius (now that she knows he’s not crazy), but first they have to actually find each other. Enter the telepathic horse, the old woman who can’t remember the past but can see the future, and the homicidal intergalactic emperor.
Criticisms: Piers Anthony is an accomplished enough writer that if you’re interested in sci-fi and fantasy in the first place, you won’t find any gaping holes in the plot. He’s one of the masters of the genre, and definitely knows his business.
Wrap-up: This was a hard read, and forced me to reevaluate whether this belongs on my bookshelf in the first place. It’s not my favorite series by him, but it’s pretty well written. What made this so hard is that he’s such a good writer, and he deals with some uncomfortable issues. Colene is suicidal, and cuts her wrists to flirt with death. She’s been raped in the past, and this affects her psyche and her daily life. Darius falls in love with her (he’s in his 20’s and she’s 14), but for this book at least, they don’t consummate their relationship. This book attempts to deal with alcoholism and a father who’s unfaithful to his wife.
Are Colene’s psychological aspects realistic? I truly don’t know. I’ve never been a 14 year old girl, and I don’t know what it feels like to be in ones head. I guess what’s a little disturbing is that Piers Anthony apparently does and, from the outside at least, he appears to do the whole “teen angst” thing quite ably, 5+ years before it occurred to Kurt Cobain. That’s pretty impressive for a (at the time) 57 year old man, but it’s still a bit uncomfortable.
If you’re already a Piers Anthony fan, chances are you might have missed this series, and it’s worth a look. If you’re not a Piers Anthony fan but wanna give him a try, I would recommend starting on one of his one-shots first (I can make some recommendations if you need some), then trying out another of his series first. This one’s a bit heavy.
Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I would give this book a C+.
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