Bestselling author of The Great and Secret Show Clive Barker once again enters the realm of pure imagination. The Imajica: five Dominions of which four are bound together and one, the Earth, is cut off from her sisters. Only a few know of the Imajica, and of those few many are frightened. A time of great risk and promise is coming when three memorable characters–John Furie Zacharias, known as Gentle, a master forger whose own life is a tissue of deception; Judith Odell, a beautiful woman desired by three men but belonging to none of them; and Pie oh’ Pah, an assassin who deals in love as well as death–will have the power to either reconcile Earth with her fellow Dominions or keep her adrift forever.

“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.”

Imajica is an epic beyond compare: vast in conception, obsessively detailed in execution, and apocalyptic in its resolution. At its heart lies the sensualist and master art forger, Gentle, whose life unravels when he encounters Judith Odell, whose power to influence the destinies of men is vaster than she knows, and Pie ‘oh’ pah, an alien assassin who comes from a hidden dimension.

That dimension is one of five in the great system called Imajica. They are worlds that are utterly unlike our own, but are ruled, peopled, and haunted by species whose lives are intricately connected with ours. As Gentle, Judith, and Pie ‘oh’ pah travel the Imajica, they uncover a trail of crimes and intimate betrayals, leading them to a revelation so startling that it changes reality forever.

“It was the pivotal teaching of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there was only ever room for three players. Between warring kings, a peacemaker; between adoring spouses, a seducer or a child. Between twins, the spirit of the womb. Between lovers, Death. Greater numbers might drift through the drama, of course — thousands in fact — but they could only ever be phantoms, agents, or, on rare occasions, reflections of the three real and self-willed beings who stood at the center. And even this essential trio would not remain intact; or so he taught. It would steadily diminish as the story unfolded, three becoming two, two becoming one, until the stage was left deserted.”

Imajica is a brilliant, beautiful work. It’s also huge ~~ but Clive Barker manages to fill each page with something compelling.  Oh ~~ and it’s weird as fuck … Imajica is filled with brilliant imagery, lavish descriptions, complex characters, and an intense, epic plot. It is also a slow read with unconventional pacing.

I still stand that this is very well written and enjoyable, it just took me SO long to finish it (it clocks in at over 1,000 pages!). Think I maybe could have benefitted from listening to an Audiobook version of this instead, which I very well might do in the future if I ever decide to revisit it one day.
It helped me to enjoy Imajica even more by splitting it into three parts myself.

Impressive in its scope and imagining, Clive Barker has created a marathon epic, with sprawling worlds, dozens of wonderfully strange and outlandish characters straight out of our nightmares, incredibly complex confrontations, deep philosophy, high adventure, and staggering tension, all thrown at the reader from the excellent beginning to the satisfying end.