Into Satan's mind
This is the sixth book of the series and the main character of this book is the incarnation of evil, or Satan. The book follows the same lines as the previous books in the series in that the first part of the book deals with the mortal life of the main character before he becomes the incarnation, and it also looks at the events of the other books from the eyes of this particular incarnation. However Satan, being the antagonist of all the other books, obviously has a significant role in the series.
The idea behind this book is something that we have seen developing for quite some time, and in away goes back to William Blake's A Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It is the idea that while there is evil in the world, Satan is not strictly evil, but rather the incarnation that holds sway over evil. In this story, while he is treated as being evil by most of the other incarnations, he is more like the Greek god Hades, whose domain is the underworld and everything that eventually comes down there. In the same way Satan is the lord of Hell and has dominion over all of the people in Hell.
However, it appears that Anthony is trying to have us sympathise with Satan, thus sanitising what he really is like. He begins by having Perry, the protagonist of the book, live a very harsh life where his family and friends are all killed by Christian crusaders. He then joins a monastery to enact his revenge, and in turn creates the inquisition. He is then tempted to break his vow of celibacy by the demon Lilith, and on his death bed is given the opportunity to take the role of Satan.
In the other books Satan is always the antagonist, however as we come to this book we are taken into his mind and into his heart and begin to see that he is not really all that bad. He is not interested in sending everybody to hell, but only those who deserve it. As such he is more like a gaol warden doing a job that nobody else likes. He is also like the police officer who has a role to perform, but is hated by many because his role tends to bring him into conflict with others.
I'm still not really sure how to take this book, but in a sense I find that while Piers Anthony has a good ability to write teenage fiction, his writing style does not seem to support an intellectual adult readership. This is the feeling that I have got from most of the books that I have read of his, particularly when we come to the issue of sex. He tries to be adult, but unfortunately his writing style seems to let him down somewhat.
