![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zenhedonFrom Clive Barker's Imajica (quoted from Amazon's review page):
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sukipot was asking for book suggestions, including possibly "dark fantasy". That brought to mind Imajica, two books which had profound impact on me when I read them. I think maybe I'll reread them soon...
When Judith's estranged husband hires a mysterious assassin to kill his wife, he unwittingly sets in motion a sequence of events that will change all the dominions of the Imajica, of which Earth is the fifth. Both Judith and her former lover John "Gentle" Zacharias are drawn into the mysteries as the assassin Pie 'oh' Pah leads them both forward to remembering their origins and connections to each other and to the ruler of the other dominions, the Autarch. Judith's journey veers from Gentle's when she finds evidence of buried and suppressed goddesses on Earth and in the other dominions. But the Autarch has domination plans of his own, and he won't be stopped without drawing blood first. "Imajica" is essentially about healing, and about love. Gentle is a broken man, a habitual womanizer, who's brought to a place of healing through his relationship with Pie 'oh' Pah, a mystif with the power to change sex according to another's true desires. Judith is claimed by many men, but she battles this ownership, and must find her own way and rely on her own strength if she's to assist in bringing the dominions back together. And ultimately it's in Judith's hands whether this healing of the Imajica comes about or fails yet again. It's a gorgeous epic fantasy that soars to a reader's heart, and once there plants a seed of imagining the world as a better place, much as Gentle and Judith do. This is one of my favorite all-time books. I feel so wordless in attempting to describe it.
"...everything you learn is already part of you, even to the Godhead Itself. Study nothing except in the knowledge that you already knew it. Worship nothing except in adoration of your true self. And fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing. For everything that does evil is in pain."
sukipot was asking for book suggestions, including possibly "dark fantasy". That brought to mind Imajica, two books which had profound impact on me when I read them. I think maybe I'll reread them soon...When Judith's estranged husband hires a mysterious assassin to kill his wife, he unwittingly sets in motion a sequence of events that will change all the dominions of the Imajica, of which Earth is the fifth. Both Judith and her former lover John "Gentle" Zacharias are drawn into the mysteries as the assassin Pie 'oh' Pah leads them both forward to remembering their origins and connections to each other and to the ruler of the other dominions, the Autarch. Judith's journey veers from Gentle's when she finds evidence of buried and suppressed goddesses on Earth and in the other dominions. But the Autarch has domination plans of his own, and he won't be stopped without drawing blood first. "Imajica" is essentially about healing, and about love. Gentle is a broken man, a habitual womanizer, who's brought to a place of healing through his relationship with Pie 'oh' Pah, a mystif with the power to change sex according to another's true desires. Judith is claimed by many men, but she battles this ownership, and must find her own way and rely on her own strength if she's to assist in bringing the dominions back together. And ultimately it's in Judith's hands whether this healing of the Imajica comes about or fails yet again. It's a gorgeous epic fantasy that soars to a reader's heart, and once there plants a seed of imagining the world as a better place, much as Gentle and Judith do. This is one of my favorite all-time books. I feel so wordless in attempting to describe it.
