Ghostlands

The Barnes & Noble ReviewMagic Time: Ghostlands, the third and concluding volume of Marc Scott Zicree's Magic Time trilogy, is a post-apocalyptic epic comparable to Stephen King's The Stand. It follows visionary Cal Griffin and his misfit band of followers as they travel across a much-transformed America where machinery no longer runs and the surviving populace are slowly being mutated into nightmarish "post-humans" with terrifying powers. On a quixotic mission to find his abducted sister and somehow defeat the mysterious Source, a secret government project that inexplicably stopped all technology and for all practical purposes destroyed modern civilization, Griffin is joined on his quest by a group of unlikely protagonists. Colleen Brooks, a mechanic turned warrior; expatriate Russian doctor Viktor Lysenko; bipolar mystic Herman Goldman; and federal agent Larry Shango. All want to defeat the Source for their own personal reasons; but will this army of outcasts be able to destroy a godlike entity that grows stronger by the hour? With masterful characterization, nonstop action, and a fascinating plot that seamlessly intertwines science fiction, fantasy, and horror, Zicree's Magic Time trilogy (Magic Time, coauthored by Barbara Hambly, and Magic Time: Angelfire, coauthored by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff) should definitely be high up on the reading lists of anyone who is a fan of post-apocalyptic classics like Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer and Robert R. McCammon's Swan Song. Paul Goat Allen