Books in This Series 1
More by Piers Anthony
THE MAN WHO LIVED BACKWARD
When life seemed pointless to Norton, he accepted the position as the Incarnation of Time, even though it meant living backward from present to past.
The other seemingly all-powerful Incarnations of Immortality—Death, Fate, War, and Nature—made him welcome. Even Satan greeted him with gifts. But he soon discovered that the gifts were cunning traps and he had become enmeshed in a complex scheme of the Evil One to destroy all that was good.
In the end, armed only with the Hourglass, Norton was forced to confront the immense power of Satan directly. And though Satan banished him to Hell, he was resolved to fight on.
Chthon was Piers Anthony’s first published novel in 1967, written over the course of seven years. He started it when he was in the US Army, so it has a long prison sequence that is reminiscent of that experience, being dark and grim. It features Aton Five, a space man who commits the crime of falling in love with the dangerous alluring Minionette and is therefore condemned to death in the subterranean prison of Chthon. It uses flashbacks to show how he came to know the Minionette, and flashforwards to show how he dealt with her after his escape from prison. The author regards this as perhaps the most intricately structured novel the science fantasy genre has seen. It was a contender for awards, but not a winner.
Five special people are the anchor points to a path across parallel universes. There is Darius, of the sympathetic magic…Nona, the ninth child of a ninth child…Seqiro, the telepathic horse…Provos, who remembers only the future…and Colene, the girl from Earth who learned that all dreams are possible.
Held captive in Nona's home universe, Colene and her friends must help fulfill a dangerous prophecy—that one day women will take the power of magic away from the cruel men who control it. But first, Nona must cross the barrier to another universe…to that strange and unpredictable place called Earth.