On a pale horse
When Zane shot Death, he learned, too late, that he would have to assume his place, speeding over the world riding his pale horse, and ending the lives of others. Sooner than he would have thought possible, Zane found himself being drawn to Satan's plot. Already the Prince of Evil was forging a trap in which Zane must act to destroy Luna, the woman he loved...unless he could discover the only way out.... The first novel of the INCARNATIONS OF IMMORTALITY series.
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2recommend
6mentions
6people
2009–2026years
33% recommend67% neutral
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What Hacker News says
- The Gulag Archipelago is on my shelf, when I rotate back to Russian authors (big fan of Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Bulgakov) I will hopefully get to it.
Here's my log for 2025, most recent at the top. Currently I am slogging my way through Heinlein's "The Number of the Beast" which I'm not a fan of. Halfway done with it though!
Gabrielle Zevin, "The Hole We're In" (not my usual genre, enjoyed this though)
Robert A. Heinlein, "Stranger in a Strange Land" (pretty good)
Robert A. Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love" (PHENOMENAL, highly recommended)
Robert A. Heinlein, "Methuselah's Children" (pretty good, required to understand "Time Enough for Love")
Richard K. Morgan, "Altered Carbon" (very good)
Robert A. Heinlein, "The Rolling Stones" (young adult, but good all the same)
Robert A. Heinlein, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (very good)
Piers Anthony, "On A Pale Horse" (very good, never got very far into the series though)
Lincoln Child, "Full Wolf Moon" (okay, not great)
Lincoln Child, "The Forgotten Room" (pretty good)
Lincoln Child, "The Third Gate" (very good)
Lincoln Child, "Terminal Freeze" (okay, not great)
William Gibson, "In the Beginning… Was the Command Line" (good, but outdated, look up what he's said about it more recently)
Lincoln Child, "Deep Storm" (very good)
James Patterson, "Along Came a Spider" (not my usual genre, okay though)
Jules Verne, "Around the World in 80 Days" (from childhood, revisited)
- > Piers Anthony, "On A Pale Horse" (very good, never got very far into the series though)
I read the whole series as a teenager, and loved it - especially the way he was able to wrap up the entire series at the end.
- In "On A Pale Horse," Zane kills the current Death and assumes the role. I don't recall that he then steps down in a later book.
- Indeed. It's also reminiscent of Death's "Pale Horse" in car mode, from Piers Anthony's novel On A Pale Horse.
- "On a Pale Horse"[1] also takes place in a world with magic and science. Airlines have to compete with magic carpet companies and computers are often used to cast magic because they can be incredibly precise.
- If you want some more mature books from Piers Anthony, the Apprentice Adept series and Incarnations of Immortality series are better than the Xanth ones. Plus, they're both only 7-8 books long, so it won't take you forever to read them all (if you actually get into them).
Apprentice Adept is kind of a cool dual-world series, with sci-fi in one world and fantasy in the other, and the ability for some to move between them. You should start with the first in the series, of course: Split Infinity.
Incarnations of Immortality also has the juxtaposition of sci-fi and fantasy, but in one world. The "hook" for this series is that the major "forces" in the world (time/death/fate/war/etc...) are actually offices which people fill (think The Santa Clause, but without Tim Allen or christmas). The first book of the series is On A Pale Horse.
A final word of warning: I read both of these series a long time ago, so it could be that they're actually not as mature as I remember =)
