For Love of Evil by Piers Anthony

In the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony, I would have to say that For Love of Evil is my favorite book. I read this book a long, long time ago in paperback and it got me thinking about how we perceive people and deities.

We have to understand first that in this series, concepts like death, war, time, mother nature, fate, good, and evil are offices and the person holding the office was once human, and therefore, not infallible. In this book, the Devil was usurped by a good man, later called Lucifer.

For Love of Evil will most likely make the reader see Satan in a different light. Personally, I like this angle very much. A good wizard, becomes a priest, rises in the clergy, is seduced by a succubus, and in his doting age assumes the role of the Lord of Evil and turns hell into a rehab center. In other words, he is a good man doing a necessary function to maintain the balance between good and evil.

He tries to enlist the help of the other incarnations but because he is the incarnation of Evil, he is abused, sneered at, and at the very least, ignored. He is troubled by the nature of good versus evil and decides to end it all in a death duel with God.

This is a really exciting book. Actually, the whole series is exciting and will make you think. For Love of Evil is the 6th book in the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony. It was a great effort from Piers Anthony to humanize the devil. I don’t know if there are ebooks out there but you can definitely get the paperback version on sites like Amazon.