“Being a Green Mother (Book Five of Incarnations of Immortality)”, by Piers Anthony

320 pages, Ballantine Books, ISBN-13: 978-0345322234

Incarnations of Immortality is the name of an eight-book fantasy series by Piers Anthony, of which Being a Green Mother was Book Five – AND the last one that I read (sorry, man, but I just plumb lost interest). Orb (yup, that’s her name alright) always knew there was something special, something…otherworldly, about her musical ability: whenever she sang or played her harp she sensed a gathering of power that she could never quite grasp fully, so she dedicated her life in search of the llano, a song so powerful that it could manipulate nature itself. Her quest lead her around the world, finding and losing love, and ultimately to assuming the role of the Incarnation of Nature…but what about the fortuneteller who, when she was still a little girl, prophesied that Orb would marry Evil? Oh, and Orb is the Daughter of Niobe from With a Tangled Skein, by the way, AND her first true love is Mym, the Indian prince who becomes War in Wielding a Red Sword, so it’s interesting to see Anthony tie all of these characters and threads (heh) together in this fashion (and we mustn’t forget about Natasha, must we?)

As with all of the other books I read in this series, Being a Green Mother didn’t age all that well. The beginning managed to be interesting, while the last third or so was very well done; it manage to drag in the middle, though. And now for the bad news: BaGM just didn’t add much to Orb, in spite of the fact that we had met her earlier; every other book managed to display the powers that the specific Incarnation possessed and how they interact with other Incarnations. In this book, Orb doesn’t become Gaea until the end of the book and you didn’t really learn what she can do. You know that she is the most powerful Incarnation besides God or Satan, but you don’t see any of her powers (don’t TELL me Nature is powerful: SHOW ME!). Piers Anthony was obviously having trouble figuring out what to do with Nature – add to the fact that he just doesn’t write female lead characters very well and you have a very mediocre book (how many times can Orb dance the Tanana in a wet nighty?) *sigh* Overall a rather dull conclusion to the series, Being a Green Mother just doesn’t live up to the hype generated in earlier stories about Nature being the strongest of the Incarnations. The story plods along with trivial character interactions and no real development of the main protagonist – and then the one who becomes the book’s true protagonist is another one of the Incarnations, not even the main focal character of the story. To me, this felt like a significant let-down (but at least there was no building interest in the outcome, as I had lost interest in the plot several chapters earlier). Still, it’s worth a read, if only to finish out the series.