Customer Reviews

Bio of a Space Tyrant Series (Refugee, Mercenary, Politician, Executive, Statesman)

5 star:		(9)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

I happen to own all five books of the Bio of a Space Tyrant series, in paperback format. I've read each one at least twice. I was looking to replace rather a worn-out copy of Politician - but now it appears I will have to scour the Out-of-Prints. This pentology tells the epic tale of one boy's rise from humble beginnings as a refugee to becoming a powerful leader, visionary, and elder statesman in a setting where the political climate holds close parallels with our own global situation of the early 1980s.

In REFUGEE, we follow Hope Hubris as a teenager with his family, forced to escape from Callisto (counterpart to Cuba or Haiti) into space and brave the depradations of pirates in the hopes of finding a better life elsewhere. Raped, plundered, and set adrift by pirates, the survivors resort to cannibalism to survive - eating their own friends and family.

In MERCENARY, we find Hope and his sister Spirit as the only known survivors of their family. Now in the military of the United States of Jupiter (counterpart to our United States), they proceed to ascend the ranks, gather allies, and mount an expedition to wipe out piracy throughout the solar system.

Returning from their successful mission, Hope turns to civilian life and embarks upon a career as a POLITICIAN, with the eventual goal of becoming President of the United States of Jupiter. With the help of his wife, Meghan, his sister, Spirit, and others, he succeeds - with a twist. Massive opposition from the incumbent president, Tocsin, leads a Constitutional assembly to suspend their Constitution and government and declare Hope Hubris to be the sole source of lawful government.

Backed by the military of which he was once a part of, he takes power as Tyrant in EXECUTIVE. Under his rule, he enforces sweeping social changes in government - addressing recurring societal problems within health care, education, crime, and the economy by executive fiat. While this approach solves some problems, his harsh rule lends strength to oppositional forces that eventually force him from power.

In the last book of the series, STATESMAN, a middle-aged Hope Hubris travels the solar system, promoting peace and sharing his vision of developing light-speed travel as a means of settling mankind into the stars before political and populational pressures cause the solar system to erupt into an unsurvivable System War III (counterpart to what would be our World War III).

The Bio of a Space Tyrant series really is an excellent read, but it can definitely bore others. If you want, you can read Mercenary first. The military tactics, intrigue, and human manipulation angles can be very interesting. It might then lead you to want to read the others, including Refugee, the book that began it all, or Executive, which is also somewhat fun.

I hope you find this review useful in determining whether these books are worthy of your purchase.

When I was in junior high, I really enjoyed P. Anthony's Xanth series, most of all for the creativity. I also remember enjoying Battle Circle, the Adept series, and some of the Incarnations of Immortality. Never anything too special, but enjoyable. This series however, gets worse and worse as it goes on. The first 2 are nominally entertaining, but Anthony seems to become bored with the story later on. He doesn't seem to have the energy to develop the story anymore, so he glosses over major events with a quick summary abstract, so that major episodes became "just so" stories. Anthony constantly refers to events of the past, assuming the reader has not read previous installments. Therefore, the educated reader has to suffer through multiple summaries of Hope Hubris' history. Eventually, the book degrades into what appears to be Anthony's own attitudes or dreams about sex and politics, which are all the more boring because of their one-sided nature. The sex in the book is especially boring in its predictable, stereotypically male approach. She's hot, she can't resist him, he nails her, she's happy just to have been the subject of his rutting. Lame. The political world is somewhat creative. Perhaps during the cold war era it may have seemed more appropriate. Reading it today it appears trite and tedious The scientific aspect has its moments, but even when the technology is exciting the explanation of it is grade school. Anthony seems desperate for the reader to know he's done some research. Overall, the books are highly predictable. Each chapter is nearly guaranteed to have an attempt on Hope's life, a sexual encounter, and a miraculous turn of events in which Hope trumps the odds.
My good memories of Piers Anthony will have to remain in my junior high and early high school life. Perhaps my maturity level at the time explains my enjoyment. But reading this series today (25+ years later), I wonder if those books (Xanth etc.) were even that good. This series is better left on the used book store's shelf.

I was an early lover of the Xanth series and then the Incarnation series. Although not all of Piers Anthony's books/Series have given me equal pleasure, I found a second hand copy of of all five books of this series years ago and plunged into a most vivid world of imagination for a week and a half. I was consumed by this wonderful story of the adventure, ingenuity and growth of Hope Hubris (what an appropriate name!) and his sister. I somehow lost the books among many moves and am hoping I can buy them again to share with my son.

The books are not really out of print. All five volumes of Bio of a Space Tyrant can be found at www.Xlibris.com (search under piers), however these new copies are expensive and are not too hard to find used.

The books parallel the history of the last 50 tears transposed to the twenty-seventh century. The first volume is quite downbeat; the other four are more like Piers's usual upbeat style. The originals of a lot the places and people can be identified. For example Megan (of volume 3) is Helen Mary Gahagan Douglas who lost a race for the Senate to Nixon in 1950. One final comment. There is a nice definition of honor on page 72 of Mercenary (vol.2). Those familiar with Piers's books know this is a recurring theme for him.

I read the first one, which boiled down to "Women and children on a ship are helpless and get raped and murdered. A lot." It got old pretty quick. I put up with it because I thought it was meant to give Hope (main character, the putative "Space Tyrant") some interesting character development. Then, by the next book there would be a fascinating anti-hero who was the understandable psychological result of all the traumas of his youth. You wouldn't quite agree with all his actions, but you could understand why he did them.

Boy, was I wrong. The second book was worse. All the rape in the first book? Served no actual purpose for anything other than Author's skeevy fetish. You can see it by how he bends himself into pretzels trying to find new and interesting ways to work women getting raped into the plot at every opportunity. There's no point to it, just gratuitous violence against women.

Hope himself is the biggest literary disappointment I've seen in a while. He's really the only character in the book, everyone else just hovers around him enabling his every whim. No other character has anything interesting about them, although there are hints that there could be, if the author would stop adoring his Marty Stu long enough to bother about any of the other characters. But no, they exist purely to take the moral blame from Hope at any given situation.

Need to fight some pirates? Here's a character to explain that it's so sad that poor little Hope has to take human life (and boy does Hope feel bad about it - without doing anything to stop it) but that it's not Hope's fault, he has to do it. Nothing about Hope being angry or messed up about the brutal murder of most of his family, wanting revenge, being desensitized to violence after seeing so much of it in book 1. No, he's still a sweet boy who wants everyone to be happy.

Need to use some trickery to win a battle? Here's another character to do it for him, so darling Hope can be the most morally spotless commander ever. Need to get your character laid? Here's half a dozen entirely implausible reasons why women have to have sex with him without ever giving their free consent (consenting sex is so dull, after all - and it's immoral unless the woman's forced into it somehow) Need to rape someone? Here's another character to explain that we understand dear Hope doesn't want to do it, but he has to rape that 18-year-old for a pointlessly implausible reason, and we'll explain all about how it's really not his fault and he's still perfect. Oh, and no real talk about how seeing his sisters and mother raped in the first book might make him less eager to do it. (why use the horrible events of the earlier books for character development and plot points when they could just be excuses for the Author to indulge his rape fetish?)

The whole thing is the Author trying to let Hope do all the bad things while apologizing for him at every turn and saying "but it was okay in this situation, and Hope's a perfect guy - really!" I wouldn't have minded so much if it was just a dark book with an anti-hero, but the author wants Dudley Do Right with an excuse to do every dirty thing the Author's ever fantasized about. And the prologues (ostensibly by Hope's daughter) are the most pointless spoilers I've seen in a while.

This series was my introduction into the wonderful worlds of Piers Anthony. The series deals with adult topics of human existence (love,loyalty,sex,power,betrayal,fear)with simple truisms the author reveals in his plot developments. Piers gives the reader surprises that have to be read to be enjoyed. A series that definitely makes the written word a force more powerful than any other medium that would even attempt to convey a story of this caliber. The first book in this series "Refugee" is a little slow in the beginning but endure it. Mr. Anthony quickly rewards those who stay along for the ride with a story that will stay with you for the ages.

Bio of a Space Tryant is a epic series of catastrophic events that take place in a forseeable future, where one man stands up to all to change the face of humanity. The series takes you into incredible visions with Anthony's writing, that keeps you locked into every book and every word. Well worth the price, I only wish that he kept on with the series like he intended to. He is normally a fantasy writer but has proven that he is a supperb Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer.

The geography of Hope Hubris' time mirrors our own. These books contain a mix of history, geography, adventure, political intrigue, romance and a hint of what may be in our own future. A truly great science fiction series... if only I can get my hands on the whole set like my brother!

This series rates as one of my favorite series. Right up there with 'Dune', 'Foundation' and 'The Stainless Steel Rat'. The last two books, Executive and Stateman, lose some of their interest, but the series as a whole is wonderful.

This series is excellent, you follow a man through 5 different times in his life and his rise to power and downfall only to see him rise again to even greater hieghts. Highly recommended that you read all 5 books.