I just unpacked a bunch of books, including 3 shelves of Anthony.
I've read:

series:

*Bio of a Space Tyrant [love this one, going to re-read it after I find Iron Maiden]
*Xanth [probably the first 15 or so, and a few random later ones if I found them for cheap at the book sale]
*Incarnations of Immortality
* Apprentice Adept
* Battle Circle
* Tarot
* Kirlian Quest/Cluster series
* Of Man and Manta

singles:
* Anthonology, Triple Detente, Prostho Plus
* both versions of But What of Earth?
* Macroscope
* Mute
* The Ring
* Shade of the Tree
* Ghost
* Total Recall
* Hard Sell
* Firefly
* MerCycle
* Killobyte
* Chthon
* Through the Ice [really cool story behind this one, a young fan wrote a story, planning to submit it to Piers; the fan was later killed in a car wreck, I think; his friends and family found it, submitted it, and Piers edited it and 'cowrote' this book.]
*Virtual Mode
* Fractal Mode

He was and historically is one of my favorite authors. Yes, some of his work doesn't have the same feel as Dragon on a Pedestal did when I first read it when I was like 12, but he also has a lot of the 'heavier' science fiction that is still good. And he definitely can milk a franchise. Xanth, according to his website, now has 29 books and 'more to be written.' I've read a few of the latter ones, and they're cute, light reading that passes a couple days, but they don't draw me into the environment and the characters as much as the first ones did. I don't know if I'd suggest a Xanth novel as a first Piers novel, or if I did, I'd say there's Piers-Xanth and Piers-everything else, don't discount one because you don't like the other.

One thing I really really like about him is his Author's Notes. For a while, as I was buying books news, it was like I was growing up with his family, reading about Penny, their horses, her job at the hospital, Piers's struggles with publishing houses and computers, his methods of writing and making footnotes, etc. It really added a dimension, and it's no exaggeration to say that there were some Author's Notes I enjoyed more than the novel preceding them.

But it does seem like his series tend to 'fade out' and lose their luster after 5, 6, 18 books. I loved On a Pale Horse, but yes, the later books didn't enthrall me so much. I loved Time, but wasn't too much into Mother Earth.

mgbfan: I'd be interested in knowing, if you could remember, what book it was you tried reading by him. I'll admit, some of his books aren't that good. Some of them took me a couple tries to get into. One I tried rereading recently, and I don't know if it was still stuck in my mind from the last reading, or just struck me as 'not so good', but I put it down after 20 pages [which I do NOT do, generally.]

His output, I believe, is so large and varied, everyone can find *something* he's written that they'll like. The tough part is the ones you read first, that you find out you don't like.
There's a bibliography on his website, www.hipiers.com, that lists every book he's published in the US.

In his autobiography, he keeps calling "Isle of Woman" and "Shame of Man" the "Great Novels of [his] Career." Has anyone read them? I think they're more historical fiction than fantasy/scifi.

edit: Actually, it's the "Geoddyssey" series...looks like he's up to 4 books in it now. The above, plus "Hope of Earth" and "Muse of Art"

Looked on Amazon.com and found the one. It was called Chimaera's Copper, and it was one of the most abysmal wastes of paper I've ever seen. Absolutly nothing redeemable about it, unless you wanted a book to demonstrate every hack bit of fantasy cliche and amateur writing ever imagined.

Sorry to come off hostile, but it was REALLY bad. It made Star Trek novels look like high literature.

I used to be. The Incarnations of Immortality books were excellent. Bio of a Space Tyrant wasn't as good as that, but I did enjoy it. And I love the Short Story by him in Dangerous Visions (the "cows"). Like many, I got sick of the Xanth books to the point where I haven't read anything by him for years.

I started with the Xanth books about 25 years ago and read the Adept series as well as Incarnations then stopped when Xanth got horribly repetitious.

I now understand (from someone that is still a huge fan of the genre) that Anthony isn't even writing these anymore, just outlining. I don't know whether that is true or not but if it is, they may as well move his books to the Romance section.

I lik Piers Anthony, but I never got to reading Xanth, just couldn't get into it. Read the Battle Circle, Incarnations, Bio of a Space Tyrant, Firefly, and a couple of the other series. Firefly just didn't do it for me though, guess that's when I noticed it was the end for me. STill enjoy Incarnations and Bio though.

I read the first five books of "Incarnations of Immortality" when I was much younger. I thought they were good in an entertaining way, but a little "light" for my tastes. Sort of read like kids' books, IYKWIM. I don't think I'd recommend them to an adult reader.

I thought Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" comic book series mined similar territory in a much more mature and successful way. So I never really bothered to read the other two books in the series.

I brought up this same subject a few years ago and got almost NO response! I loved "A Spell for Chameleon", the first book in the Xanth series, and IMHO, the best book in the series. In fact, I think the story in Chameleon could be made into a fantasy movie that would hold up to comparable movies like Harry Potter. Bink and Humphrey were hilarious.

I also read "On a Pale Horse" and a few other PA books including the one about the dentist who was kidnapped by aliens. I highly recommend reading that last book!

I read quite a bit of Anthony as a teenager including the Xanth books up through Vale of the Vole, all of the Phaze books(Split Infinity, etc.), the Incarnations of Immortality and a few other novels. I just re-read A Spell For Chameleon recently, and while it was good, I realize just how his writing can be so juvenile. And I don't mean as in focused on juvenile readers, but as if it was written by a very gifted juvenile who just can't talk about sex enough. Plus, his "This is how great I am" afterwards in later books kind of turned me off. I'll say I enjoyed his work in the context in which I read it.

Prostho Plus...

No appypollyloggies necessary for having an opinion!
I actually have Chimera's Copper, but have never read it--I've started it a few times, and couldn't get into it. Don't remember what I thought about it, just that I didn't read it. So that one didn't do much for me, and I am an Anthony fan.

I definitely enjoyed the first 3 or 4 Xanth books the most; it was new, introducing a lot of characters and actually trying to flesh them out, which didn't occur that much later on. Plus the talents were pretty creative; later on, he started reaching for talents.

While as a titillated teenager, I didn't mind the sexual aspects of his writing, [they were sexy enough to feel 'sexy', but not crude enough to turn off a 13 year old], reading back on them now, especially considering he's like 70 years old or whatever, is a little disturbing, and the style, like Alvis says, sometimes is very 'hey! look at me! I'm writing about sex!' I don't mind sex scenes, and some of them are at least creative, but it needs to serve a purpose in the story. He definitely does seem like a horndog sometimes, though.

And his personal notes [I've just gone to his website and read a couple recent Author's Notes], while an interesting look 'behind the scenes', do sometimes cross that fine line between 'confident' and 'cocky.'

Ginwen: the cow short story--was that 'In the Barn'? That was a disturbing story; that was reprinted in Anthonology, and had a few other quirky little stories [On the Methods of Torture, The Bridge].

Yep, that's the one. That may even be where I read it (not sure whether I read that or Dangerous Visions first).