“Wielding a Red Sword (Book Four of Incarnations of Immortality)”, by Piers Anthony

313 pages, Ballantine Books, ISBN-13: 978-0345322210

Incarnations of Immortality is the name of an eight-book fantasy series by Piers Anthony, of which Wielding a Red Sword was Book Four. Mym, an Indian prince, defies his father’s plans for an arranged marriage and instead joins a travelling circus where he meets Orb, who teaches him to overcome his own handicap of a terrible stutter through song. He is soon discovered and his father arranges for him to marry a princess by the name of Rapture of Malachite. After fighting against this for days on end, he finally realizes that Rapture is worth loving, and so concedes to the marriage; however, a plot to separate him from her results in his decision to become the Incarnation of War…although, upon years-after reflection, the driving premise of this volume seems more concerned with finding a permanent love interest for Mym than it does with exploring the role/nature of the Incarnation of War – which is too bad, as Anthony raises the troubling concept that war is a necessary outcome of conflict within societies and strives to reduce the waste and injustice entailed. Deep, man, and a gauntlet thrown to the “war is never the answer” crowd. Thus, this book doesn’t really add much to the series as it read like a point-by-point retread of On a Pale Horse but with a protagonist that’s less sympathetic and more like, say, a little prick you’d like to kick repeatedly.

However, two interesting conventions are either expanded upon or introduced. The first is the tying together of the various characters, hinted at in the first couple of books, but emphasized strongly in this volume. Now we know some of what happened to Orb, introduced in the previous volume as the daughter of Niobe. It certainly appears that Anthony intended to unite all the Incarnations in one family (or love) relationship. The other is the idea of an Incarnation defeating Satan by threatening to bring down the entire world. In the previous three novels, the title character’s showdown with Satan never approached this level. Also expanded upon are the concepts of the “lesser incarnations”, a plot device which is (probably) necessary to explain the “Four Horsemen” which traditionally accompany War, but introduces a weakness in the integrity of the series as a whole. The worst aspect of this volume is that it neglects the qualities that are the strengths of the other books in the series: namely, Anthony’s delightful universe, wherein science and magic coexist with each other; and the quasi-religious framework of the incarnations, neither of which is properly exploited in the book, despite numerous opportunities to do so (additionally, the unifying plot of the series is only tangentially explored, leaving most of the book to rely on Mym’s antics). S’alright book, I guess, but with several glaring and, thus, distracting weaknesses.