Always kinda liked this series, a bit of a guilty pleasure; re-read it recently with a certain nostalgia. I felt the protagonist's adventures in the scientific world of Proton were a lot more compelling than his adventures in the magical world, since as an Adept he had the power to basically wish for anything he wanted in Phaze. I enjoyed his climb through the Tourney and up the ranks of the Citizenry, I liked the robot equal rights subplot, and I liked the book's ending.

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I enjoy Piers Anthony's writing style and characters. This is not my favorite book or series of his but I do still quite enjoy it and I would recommend it. ( )

Something about Pier Anthony series always seem to find me slogging my way through to finish the last book. Yes, I know that he wrote more after this one, but I barely remember that I might have read Out of Phaze. I certainly didn't read any of the others. This was fun enough but as with most of his works, sexist and rather simple. Anyway, it's the last of the Adepts for me in my Year of Nostalgic Rereads... ( )

The third in the series finally separates the two worlds. There is one item that truly irritated me throughout Juxtaposition. In the other novels it is quite secret that Stiles can shift between the two worlds, but in the third everybody and his brother knows all the details of Stiles journey back and forth. If it wasn't for Anthony's excellent action writing and creative game elements, I probably would have tossed it aside. It still amazes me this series hasn't been done in at least film or Anime format. ( )

Juxaposition is definitely the best of the initial trilogy. The pace is very fast, with satisfying, significant events happening regularly. Stile-as-Citizen is delightful - some of the gambling scenes are better than any of the previous Game scenes. And while Stile's rigid morality gets tiresome, it is, at least, internally consistent, and the deux ex machina that insures everyone gets a happy ending is better than marginally plausible.

The rampant sexism gets no better - Stile still has every woman he meets drooling after him, to ridiculous lengths, and while Sheen at least has better things to do for most of the book than swoon, she does manage to work in some significant swooning in her spare moments. The Citizens' culture seems about as patriarchal as it gets - the women go for medical/surgical beauty improvements while the men are content to be fat slobs, which would only be mildly eyebrow-raise-worthy if it wasn't explained as "The vanity of women caused them to go this route." In a book describing a male-gaze paradise, that was almost enough to cause me to throw the book across the room.

This was originally the end of the trilogy, and it's a perfectly good end, for what it is - the additional four books are definitely only for the faithful. I loved these when I was a kid, but man, I'm not sure I can even justify the shelf space for them any more. ( )