Zelse

Like most of Piers Anthony's books, it varies from interesting/amusing/funny to cringeworthy, often in the same paragraph. I find the series fractionally more enjoyable than it is off-putting, but if you aren't very tolerant of “dated” writing it's probably not for you. Forums have risen and fallen debating Piers Anthony's outlook on sex and I'm not going to go into it, but suffice it to say that his depictions of heterosexual sexuality range from strange to rather reductivist/misogynistic. Additionally, in this book the main characters are all women, and Piers Anthony is definitely not especially well-suited to writing believable female characters. If you can look beyond the imperfections, this is a perfectly serviceable light afternoon read, but many readers will probably want to give it a miss.

I re-read this on a whim when my brother mentioned he was teaching it to his class; I'd read this when I was a child. It's still a fun little story, worth the 30 or 40 minutes it took to read.

A bit funnier than the first book, which I appreciated - and manages to not feel too much like merely more of the same. I read it on a whim, but I don't regret the hour or so it took.

A good end to an enjoyable series (though I think there's now a fourth entry on Audible?). Just enough pathos to allow a bit of catharsis and give the story some extra punch.

A very enjoyable bit of sci-fi, with likeable and yet alien aliens.