Geodyssey Books In Order

Publication Order of Geodyssey Books

Geodyssey is a series of epic fantasy books written by a bestselling American author of fantasy and sci-fi Piers Anthony. It is a remarkable epic of courage, passion, survival, desire, ambition, and savagery. The Geodyssey series is a saga unlike any other ever written and its nothing short of the history of mankind narrated through the lives of extraordinary brave men and women who are reborn over and over again in history.

Piers Anthony began the publication of Geodyssey series in 1993 when Isle of Woman the first book in the series was published. Anthony would then publish three other books until Muse of Art published in 1999 then take an 11-year break, and then released, Climate of Change the fourth book in the series in 2010.

Isle of Woman

From the start of human pre-history, humans learned to create beautiful pictures with words, use fire and throw stones. By doing so, it gave him an advantage over the other animals in the world and thus allowed him to spread out of Africa and into the rest of the world. In those early beginnings, humans shared their precious world with other hominids, but with time he had only to share it with fellow humans, but even that sometimes proved difficult.

Piers Anthony envisions a connect lifetime. He introduces two people Blaze and Ember who are in love from the beginning of time. Unfortunately, the two can never get married as they belong to the same tribe. Therefore Blaze must leave the tribe and find his destiny on his own, as all other men do. Repeating their lives over and over again in different locations around the world, and take part in tiny but great changes that create history- contact with the Neandertals, the creation of early civilization, reaching Australia, control of fire. The author advances the ages of his characters briefly with every single shift- some shifts encompass thousands and millions of years but allows the characters a continuous history.

Piers Antony uses a strange approach to story narration- Blaze and Ember each have families of their own, grow old, but still keep their fascination with both fire and the cultural advancement of the times. The author ends his story with a bit of twist and turns, shifting not to the present but instead to a near future where the result of the many decisions that man has made the play themselves out.

Isle of Woman is the first installment in Geodyssey tetralogy series by Piers Anthony. Each of the chapters in the novels is typically a self-contained short story, and each story is set in a different setting, and different era, but all the stories in the book feature the same group of characters but under different names.

For instance, Isle of Woman narrates the story of two families who existed in the Rift Valley of the East and Central many years ago. In Lascaux and Neander the more recent prehistory, and in the contemporary societies ranging from the Hittites to the Silk Road, then from medieval Lithuania to British Raj and summing up in Houston in 2021.

For example in chapter 16 of Isle of Woman, is set in T’ang dynasty in China and the lead character in this story is Lotus, who appears under different names in many other stories. She is a worker to the emperor’s principal concubine. She is mostly involved in her lady’s complicated court of intrigues but gets long hours of waiting especially during formal functions, when she plays Go with another servant.

Surprisingly, the novel
referred to the game as Go, a commonly used term in the western world but originated from Japanese name rather than the Chinese terms weiqi or wei-chi. The peak of this story turns on Lotus’s efforts to influence the end results of a Go game being played by the emperor.

This chapter is an
interesting and a well-narrated story on its own concept, and it would deserve a positive place in the library of Go literature as a separate work. Many other chapters in the book call for similar praise, but the book as a whole transcends the sum of the respective stories. Anthony uniquely set ambitious objectives for himself with Geodyssey series- first he wants his batch of brief, evocative accounts to add up to a work of archaeology, paleontology, and history, narrating the story of our species through the eyes of the few of its members. Secondly, the author has a clear ideological agenda, intending to warn the readers about trends in the human history which he assumes are leading humanity to the social and ecological crisis.

Shame of Man

A Shame of Man is a magnificent epic of desire, triumph, danger, and tragedy and its nothing less than the story of mankind. It is the story of two lovers who are reborn throughout history- Hugh, a musician and dreamer and his beloved Ann, a dancer as the two struggles to preserve both their families and their way of life during the most unstable times of our savage past- and humanity troubled future.

Through the eyes of these two characters, readers are able to experience mankind’s most significant achievements and also witness humanity greatest shame, the unending exploitation of nature that threatens man’s survival.

Hope of Earth

In Isle of Woman and Shame of Man, the first and second book in Geodyssey series, bestselling American novelist, Piers Anthony narrates the tragedies and triumphs of two great families born over and over again in the most troubling times of human history.

Now in
the hope of Earth, the author brings readers to a stirring epic that takes us from the ancient beginning in Africa Great Rift Valley to the Andes one hundred years from now. Anthony also includes some of history’s most amazing figures such as the mysterious Ice Man, Queen Boudicca, King Herod, King Louis XIV of France and the Mongol Chieftan
Tamurlane.

Imaginative, inspiring and exciting, Hope of Earth is the tale of a group of heroic warriors bound by ties of honor; blood and passion who fight to overcome their violent past and create a new and brighter future.

Even though the story follows one family through history, the author picks different events in history and narrates a brief backstory and then reveals his thoughts behind why he writes each chapter the way he does. If you love reading fantasy novels, then Geodyssey series by Piers Anthony is a series worth your time.