Incarnations of Immortality is a series of eight fiction books written by Piers Anthony.  Each book is about an anthropomorphic personification within the ranks of the Incarnations of Immortality, which are, in order of books, Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature, Evil, Good, and Night. For the majority of the book series, each anthropomorphic personification is a human who is then recruited near the start of each book; the books then explore how the human adjusts to their new office, powers, and other characters.

The books are best read together in a series, as the characters & story arcs weave in and out of all the books and interact with each other heavily. Despite this interweaving, each book can be read as a standalone book and is a complete story in itself; the reader never feels like they are missing backstory, and the books aren't endlessly repetitive either.  Incarnations of Immortality was originally envisioned and written as a five books series, with books six and seven added soon after due to popular demand. Further demand then saw book eight published seventeen years after book seven. It is my opinion that the addition of books six & seven was excellent and smooth, but book eight does not meet the same calibre of writing and would have been better not added. That being said, I still found book eight worth reading.

 

The order of the series titles:

  1. On a Pale Horse
  2. Bearing an Hourglass
  3. With a Tangled Skein
  4. Wielding a Red Sword
  5. Being a Green Mother
  6. For Love of Evil
  7. And Eternity
  8. Under a Velvet Cloak

 

Trigger warnings: This series is definitely written by Piers Anthony, whose books often include a mixed bag of things such as suicide, pedophilia, torture, sexism, etc.

 

Brevity Quest 2018: entry #1, word count 289. 

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