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. 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.

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. Periodically, Hapeximendios has sent His ``sons''-including Christ-to attempt to unite, by magical rites, the Fifth Dominion to the others. 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). 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.

Imajica book review