imajica i the fifth dominion clive barker

The inspiration and many of the ideas for Imajica came to Clive Barker in dreams, and so inspired, he worked at an intense pace to complete the novel. Considered wide in scope, elaborate in its imagery, and meticulous in its detail, the novel covers themes such as God, sex, love, gender and death. The work, 824 pages at its first printing in 1991, chronicles the events surrounding the reconciliation of Earth, called the Fifth Dominion, with the other four Dominions, parallel worlds unknown to all but a select few of Earth's inhabitants. Barker, in 1997, named it as his favourite of all his writings up to that point. 'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.Imajica is a fantasy novel by British author Clive Barker. Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. 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. 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. 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 i the fifth dominion clive barker