Piers Anthony is the man who just can't let a good finished series lie. Initially a trilogy, the Apprentice Adept series ends with Phaze and Proton separated forever, with no possibility of renewed contact. Five years after finishing the first three books, Anthony returns to the series with another trilogy and a final stand-alone novel. I read the initial trilogy back in the early 90s, and re-read them in 2011 in preparation for finishing off the series with these later books. Although nearly two years since I finished Juxtaposition it has been 20 years within the story. Stile and Lady Blue have raised Bane; Citizen Blue and Sheen have produced and raised their robot child, Mach.The first chapter of the novel is almost entirely exposition, and not particularly well done exposition at that. I thought I had a pretty good handle on the ending of the previous trilogy and where everybody was, but reading the exposition in Out of Phaze made me doubt what I remembered and managed to confuse me no end. Robots now have serf status on Proton and aliens are also an accepted class of serf. The catch-up is presented to us as the young robot Mach explaining his world and his family to a new alien, Agape, he finds himself having to entertain at the game. Obviously, with the worlds split apart forever, Anthony has to find a way around his ending. This time, instead of any ability to physically move from one frame to another, we find that Mach and Bane – if they both want it and happen to be in the exact same place at the same time – are able to swap places psychically. Yeah, that's a lot of ifs, buts, conditions and coincidences.Initially, Mach is surprised to find himself in the Phaze frame, and the fact that he is almost unprepared to accept what has happened means that he comes close to dying a number of times almost immediately. Bane, however, we find out when we switch to his PoV was really the instigator for the switch. He had been using his magic and tracking a sort of psychic 'feeling' of Mach to home in on his location. Almost immediately, both Bane and Mach fall in love with their counterpart's female friends (strong flashbacks to the first trilogy here) – Bane with the alien Agape and Mach with the unicorn Fleta. As with seemingly all Piers Anthony, there's a strong undercurrent of sex in the story. Bane appears to have indulged in a reasonable amount of casual bestiality with both unicorns and vampires. Mach has to indulge in a fairly heavy bout of bestiality with Fleta while she is in heat, in order to stop her having to leave to find another herd to 'service' her. It's never quite clear whether all this sex is while she is in her unicorn or human shape, but I'm hoping it was the latter. Meanwhile Agape almost immediately expects Bane to 'teach her the ways of human love' and he doesn't waste a bunch of time.While the novel felt strongly that it was an attempt to extend the series beyond his original plan and consequently repeated a lot of those ideas, tweaked slightly. Somehow in spite of all its flaws, I enjoyed it.
Books 4/5 are where the series really breaks down. Because there is no physical link between the frames of Phaze and Proton anymore, Anthony resorts to a mental connection between the offspring of the main characters of the previous three books. The characters play switcheroo across the frames in a Freaky-Friday-esque maneuver, encountering and developing love interests in the opposite frame. Pretty standard cookie-cutter plot with only a few small twists and turns to keep things interesting.The biggest drawback that I could see is that the story is told from the viewpoint of each of the 4 main characters in turn, but has entirely too much repetition and review to keep my interest. And then just for good measure, one of the characters has a Game in the Proton phase where in the competition of storytelling, she rehashes the entire plot of the story YET AGAIN. By this point in the novel I was just breezing through, waiting to finish the story.I think this is as far as I've ever gotten in this series - I got my hands on copies of the last few books, but if they're as droll as this one, it's going to be my recommendation for new readers to stop after the previous, 3rd book in the series.
What do You think about Out Of Phaze (1988)?
I liked this sequel better than the previous trilogy. One thing Anthony has never been afraid of is letting his characters age and step back for the new generation to have a turn.The names are still puns and silliness, of course, and the fact that we're still operating in two different frames means there's a lot of duplicate-style action.... But the criss-cross romances are sincerely touching, especially that of Mach and Fleta; and there's a nice contrast between Blue's reaction to events and Stile's that keeps things interesting.
—Angela Delgado
Twenty years has passed since the events of the last book in this series. Blue has been living in Proton, endeavoring to bring serf status to the self-willed machines as well as other aliens from off planet. Stile resides in Phaze, but his progress towards unity of species has been much more slow-going. The two have borne sons: Mach, the robot son of Blue & Sheen and Bane, the human Adept son of Stile and Lady Blue. The two youngsters stumble upon a way to trade places within their forms and can therby exchange messages across the frames. Both Adverse Adepts and Contrary Citizens wish to harness this ability to gain power and, of course, Blue and Stile wish to use it to promote unity. Complicating matters, Mach and Bane form romantic relationships in each other’s frames.It has been stated that this volume of the series is lacking, and not as fascinating as the previous. My opinion runs contrary. I find that revisiting a fictional setting some years later to learn the events that followed a ‘happily ever after’ can be illuminating. Some authors wish to revisit their creations so much that they manufacture some sort of ridiculous conflict to describe, but the reader can tell that the plot is more of a device for satisfying nostalgia than a legitimate further challenge in the characters’ lives. By making the second generation the protagonists, Anthony is able to revisit the characters, but still allow them their continued happy existence. Mach & Bane are both compelling characters, particularly Mach’s robot body and his first experiences in a human form with human emotions he cannot control by circuitry. Over on Bane’s side of things, I find him less engaging than his alien companion, Agape, an amoebic life form able to shape herself however she chooses from a very versatile blob of material. She is struggling with similar issues to Mach, in exploring humanity and the human process/experience of Love. The transcendant theme of the piece is important and translates well to current society: differences between oneself and other sentient beings, whether it be race, ability, religion, alienness, machinery, or shape-changing unicorn/hummingbird/person-ness, need not be barriers to communication, and even love.WARNING: Cliffhanger ending. Have the next book nearby, if possible.
—Emily
