Rating: 
Summary: Well worth your money!
Review: Bearing an Hourglass is an excellent novel, combining the feeling of classic science fiction with a story of a man who is searching for his place in the entire scheme of things. The same theme is present in this particular novel that is shown in the other four books of the first five. Many times during my reading of this book, I found myself trapped within the pages. I could not put it down. You will most likely finish this book in one sitting. But, a word of warning. Bearing an Hourglass may give you a headache :( . The fascinating plot will make you have to think very hard of what is actually being said. This is my personal favorite of the series and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have.
Rating: 
Summary: Confusing, But good if you want an interesting read!
Review: Bearing an hourglass is confusing. If you have trouble grasping how time actually works, don't read this. If you want a good read, however, I'd reccomend this. Piers anthony is a GENIUS!!!!
Rating:
Summary: great followup
Review: Bearing an Hourglass was a good follow-up story to On a Pale Horse. It introduces new ideas about time. Norton is an interesting character who has quite a few problems. Zane and Luna show up affrequently in this wonderful story. Zane is introduced as Thanatos and Luna as Senator Kaftan. 20 years later it's almost time for Luna to balk Satan but the Father of Lies manipulates things where he can. Will Norton be able to fix time and save the world from Hell on Earth? Another Question. Through the series how many more names WILL the brilliant author come up with for Satan? The parts with Gwain the ghost may be pretty mundane at times but keep reading. It gets un-boring fast and ends up being REALLY good.A must read for everyone who loved On a Pale Horse.
Rating: 
Summary: Quite good
Review: Book 2 of 'Incarnations of Immortality 'This was the first book of this series that I read, and I picked it up primarily because I liked the cover art and was familiar with the author. It seems I like Anthony's work less and less with each new title he writes -- I find his characters' thoughts too dialogue-ish, overbearing, and belabouring of the obvious -- but I still enjoy this title a lot despite a couple of logical inconsistencies. Warning: Though this book contains nothing explicit, some of the themes are definitely adult in nature. I'd give this a 'PG' rating.
Rating:
Summary: When a Man Gets a Very Strange Job
Review: How can a man, given the role or job of being an immortal and making time run the way it should, do the job? He has to live backwards, of course. Norton gets this job, in a continuation of Piers Anthony's series, "The Incarnations of Immortality". Each book deals with an aspect of reality - death, time, fate, nature, war, evil, good - by having an ordinary person take, get stuck with, or slip into the job of being the Incarnation of that aspect of reality and having to run it. The series tackles many philosophical issues, while he writing is in a ligh, whimsical style and the setting is a world very much like our own, except that magic has the same status and commonality as science. "Wielding an Hourglass" is well-written, the characters are likeable, the plot is coherent, but it gets four stars instead of five because the subject - time - just does not have the power of the subject of "On a Pale Horse" - death. Good, fun, reading, that is somewhat thought-provoking. It does get into the question of how a man deals with power when his own wishes are at odds with the needs of the many.
Rating:
Summary: When a Man Gets a Very Strange Job
Review: How can a man, given the role or job of being an immortal and making time run the way it should, do the job? He has to live backwards, of course. Norton gets this job, in a continuation of Piers Anthony's series, "The Incarnations of Immortality". Each book deals with an aspect of reality - death, time, fate, nature, war, evil, good - by having an ordinary person take, get stuck with, or slip into the job of being the Incarnation of that aspect of reality and having to run it. The series tackles many philosophical issues, while he writing is in a ligh, whimsical style and the setting is a world very much like our own, except that magic has the same status and commonality as science. "Wielding an Hourglass" is well-written, the characters are likeable, the plot is coherent, but it gets four stars instead of five because the subject - time - just does not have the power of the subject of "On a Pale Horse" - death. Good, fun, reading, that is somewhat thought-provoking. It does get into the question of how a man deals with power when his own wishes are at odds with the needs of the many.
Rating: 
Summary: Uninspired mess of pottage
Review: I am not an Anthony reader but read his first book in this series with enough pleasure to give the second offering a try.
In his after word for the first book he gives a tiresome account of his internal bodily functions and crows ad nausium about what a successful author he is and his ability to sell his self admitted, assembly line, literary creations for big bucks at the drop of a hat.
He also laments his inability to be accepted as anything but a genre author. After struggling through half of the tedious "hourglass" I can see why this acceptance has been so elusive. This effort lacks even the substance of a decent comic book, having more the quality of a sort of literary diarrhea. One thing in particular annoyed me, his consistently repeated descriptions of female bodies as "gelatinous", "rippling", and "quaking" in a drooling, unctuous manner, which leads me to believe Mr. Anthony may be an aged chubby chaser. I'm glad he has made yet more money to support himself in his reclusive Florida haunt but a more scrupulous editor would never have passed this thin and tiresome effort on to print.
Rating:
Summary: OK, I guess
Review: I couldn't work up much interest in this book. It started out well, but went downhill. There were parts that didn't seem to have been thought through very well; there were some problems I thought of that didn't seem to have occurred to the author. I didn't find it very confusing, as others did: Several parts *would* have been confusing, except that I wasn't interested enough to think them over. Also, I didn't like Piers Anthony's afterword much. Although I could relate to it more than to some of the characters in the book, it was filled with unnecessary details, and it seemed very arrogant ("I *am* a world-class writer", Anthony declares). The plot kind of went nowhere (there was no very obvious climax or complication), and there were several subplots that felt like a waste of my time (Time, ha ha, get it?). Overall it was an okay book, but it's far from the thought-provoking masterpiece the back cover suggests it is.
Rating:
Summary: Typically witty and adventurous "incarnation" volume
Review: I enjoyed the first "Incarnation" story "On a Pale Horse" very much, and hoped the rest of the books would hold up as well. The rest of the series follow pretty much the same format, but each tells the story of a different aspect of humanity and life: Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature and Evil. The stories vary in the way that the protagonists deal with adversity using the powers of their respective roles as these incarnations. Bearing an Hourglass starts out in the usual story about the life of the protagonist, in this case a wanderer who doesn't think he'll ever settle down. The critical moment is when they are faced with the prospect of immortality in exchange for service to all of humanity, and in this case, the lead character is faced with saving his love from a sorrowful death in exchange for becoming the incarnation of time, Chronos. The story takes many twists as Satan tries to take advantage of the new Chronos's lack of experience, as Satan tries deception after deception to prevent Chronos from foiling the doings of Evil. I enjoyed the story very much, and would recommend the whole series to anyone familiar with Anthony's other work. It's also a good introduction to Anthony, though I would also recommend the 2 "Adept" series. Both "Incarnations" and "Adept" blend magic/fantasy and technology in interesting ways to create universes that stand out from typical sci-fi or fantasy.
Rating:
Summary: Typically witty and adventurous "incarnation" volume
Review: I enjoyed the first "Incarnation" story "On a Pale Horse" very much, and hoped the rest of the books would hold up as well. The rest of the series follow pretty much the same format, but each tells the story of a different aspect of humanity and life: Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature and Evil. The stories vary in the way that the protagonists deal with adversity using the powers of their respective roles as these incarnations. Bearing an Hourglass starts out in the usual story about the life of the protagonist, in this case a wanderer who doesn't think he'll ever settle down. The critical moment is when they are faced with the prospect of immortality in exchange for service to all of humanity, and in this case, the lead character is faced with saving his love from a sorrowful death in exchange for becoming the incarnation of time, Chronos. The story takes many twists as Satan tries to take advantage of the new Chronos's lack of experience, as Satan tries deception after deception to prevent Chronos from foiling the doings of Evil. I enjoyed the story very much, and would recommend the whole series to anyone familiar with Anthony's other work. It's also a good introduction to Anthony, though I would also recommend the 2 "Adept" series. Both "Incarnations" and "Adept" blend magic/fantasy and technology in interesting ways to create universes that stand out from typical sci-fi or fantasy.
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