Description:

The Journey of Three Lifetimes There has never been a book like *Imajica.* Transforming every expectation of fantasy fiction with its heady mingling of radical sexuality and spiritual anarchy, it has carried its millions of readers into regions of passion and philosophy that few books have even attempted to map. It's an epic in every way; vast in conception, obsessively detailed in execution, and apocalyptic in its resolution. A book of erotic mysteries and perverse violence. A book of ancient, mythological landscapes and even more ancient magic. Most of all, it's a book of extraordinary characters. At its heart lies the great sensualist and master art forger, Gentle, whose life of excess comes unravelled when he encounters two other unforgettable individuals: Judith Odell, whose power to influence the destinies of the men besotted by her is vaster than she knows, and Pie'oh'pah, an alien assassin who comes from a dimension most of us don't even know exists. That dimension--or Dominion, as it is known--is one of five in the great system called Imajica. They are worlds which are in many ways utterly unlike our own, but which are ruled, peopled, and haunted by species whose lives are intricately connected with us. As Gentle, Judith, and Pie'oh'pah travel the Imajica--from the darkness of its infernal regions into its visionary places--they uncover a trail of Dominion-spanning crimes and intimate betrayals that will lead them to a revelation so startling it will change the way you look at reality forever. ** ### From Kirkus Reviews Dazzling metaphysical epic-adventure as Barker surpasses his previous ground-breaking work (The Great and Secret Show, 1989, etc.) to reconfigure the Fall and to imagine a modern-day attempt to reverse it. A complex cosmology underpins the vigorous, at times horrific, action here: `Imajica'' is the known universe of five`Dominions,'' or parallel worlds, four `reconciled'' but the fifth, Earth,`unreconciled''--unaware of the other four, of the tyrannical `Autarch'' who rules them, and of the`God Hapeximendios,'' who oversees all five (and who wrested `His'' power from the`Goddesses'' of old). Periodically, Hapeximendios has sent His `sons''--including Christ--to attempt to unite, by magical rites, the Fifth Dominion to the others. The last attempted`Reconciliation'' ended in catastrophe--an invasion of Earth by hellish powers--and today magic has been nearly eradicated from Earth by a `Society'' that alone knows of the Imajica and of the catastrophe. The densely woven story here opens with a jealous man venturing into London's dankest slum to hire an assassin to kill his estranged wife, Judith; the assassin turns out to be a`mystif,'' a fabulous creature from the Second Dominion, capable of appearing as the erotic ideal of any who behold it. As the mystif hunts Judith, it in turn is hunted by Judith's former lover, `Gentle,'' who in time learns that he is the new`Reconciler''- -and the mystif his long-forgotten servant. Undertaking dangerous, splendor-filled journeys through the other Dominions, Gentle and the mystif fall in love, marry, and encounter numerous fantastic creatures and, finally, death; later, Gentle helps dethrone the Autarch, learns the chilling secret of his and Judith's origin, helps free the Goddesses and slay God, and, back on Earth, inspires the destruction of the Society and undertakes Reconciliation--with hell-borne, then heaven-sent, results. An astonishing feat of the imagination, immensely engrossing despite its demanding--at times indulgent--length, running riot with ideas, fantastical inventions, graphic sex and violence, soul- terrors, and emotional and intellectual resonances. Barker's best yet. -- *Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.* ### Review "Barker's most ambitious work to date...rapturously full of emtions." -- *L.A. Life* "Exhilarating...[a] masterpiece." -- *USA Today* "Mesmerizing invention." -- *Publishers Weekly* "Spellbinding." -- *The Atlanta Journal* "Wonderfully entertaining...Clive Barker is a magician of the first order." -- *New York Daily News* "[A] dazzling metaphysical epic-adventure...An astonishing feat of the imagination...Barker's best yet." -- *Kirkus Review*