When Death Knocks At Your Door (On a Pale Horse - Piers Anthony)

Member Name: Shadowtwinchaos

Product:	On a Pale Horse - Piers Anthony
Date:	12/12/01 (113 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Interesting concept, Good characters, Great introduction to the series

Disadvantages: Not for everyone, May offend some people who are of strong religious beliefs

The first book in a Piers Anthony series called Incarnations of Immortality, On A Pale horse is my favorite from the series. Probably the easiest to understand and a very good introduction to the series. I really enjoyed this book as the first and what I feel is the best book in the set.

A man named Zane, down on his luck, feels his only escape to be suicide. He gets a gun and is ready to shoot himself. But with an odd twist of fate, Death comes to collect his soul a second too soon and gets shot instead. Zane is then forced into taking over the position of Death. Talk about on the job training. With only a few words from a strange person who appears, Zane struggles to find some balance in his life as he begins collecting the souls of the dead.

In the book, when a soul is born, it is in perfect balance between good and evil and the actions they do during their lives determines whether they go to Heaven or Hell. Death is only summoned on cases where the soul is in balance. It is up to Zane, as Death, to decide if a soul should go up or down. He struggles to answer his own questions of morality as he judges the souls of others.

While mastering the position of death, he is also caught up in the battle for souls between Satan and God. The only problem is, God isn't fighting. Satan is determined to win over Death and use him for his own evil purposes.

Can Zane resist Satan and do the job he grows to love? Will Satan win? Find out what it Death is all about and maybe learn something about your own choices in life in a fascinating tale of the one who rides On A Pale Horse.

I sat on the edge of my seat almost through the whole book. The concepts, the balances of good and evil, the moral judgements, all brought questions to my mind about how I would have decided to do things if I were Death. In one scene, Zane comes upon a soul ready to go, but life support systems were keeping them alive. Zane could not remove the soul be
cause the machines would not release it. I'll not tell you what he decided to do, for that you have read the book. But think about it. Do you think that people should be kept alive even after they should have passed simply by machines? These are the kinds of questions that I found myself asking myself as I read.

The books that follow in the series are about the other incarnations: Time, War, Fate, Mother Nature, Satan and God. Some of them are more confusing such as Time who moves backwards and Fate which has all three aspects. So, in fact, Fate has three jobs. But all of the books open your eyes to ideas that you may not have thought about. Such as war being a great thing. Or tangled fates.

I once thought that Xanth was my favorite series by this author, however, I have to say that this book and this series changed my mind. While not of the same type, still fantasy at it's best.

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