Imajica was published by HarperCollins in 1991. It is Barker’s masterpiece — a novel of enormous ambition that attempts nothing less than a cosmology, a theology, and a complete metaphysics, all wrapped in a story of love, betrayal, and interdimensional travel.
The Imajica is a system of five Dominions — five interconnected worlds — that were once united but have been separated from each other (and especially from Earth, the Fifth Dominion) by a catastrophic magical event two centuries ago. The Reconciliation — the magical ritual that will reunite the Dominions — has been attempted once and failed, killing thousands. Now, a new attempt is being organized by forces both human and otherworldly.
John Furie Zacharias, called Gentle — a failed painter and compulsive seducer — discovers that he has a connection to the Reconciliation and to the mysterious figure of the Maestro Sartori, who attempted the first Reconciliation two hundred years ago. His journey takes him through the other Dominions — worlds of astonishing strangeness and beauty — accompanied by Pie’oh’pah, a mystif (a shape-shifting being of fluid gender and species) who is both assassin and lover.
The novel’s sexual politics are radical. Pie’oh’pah’s fluid identity — neither male nor female, neither human nor alien — challenges conventional categories of gender and sexuality. Barker, who came out publicly in the early 1990s, uses the fantasy framework to explore queer identity in ways that realistic fiction could not accommodate.
The theological dimension is equally ambitious. The Unbeheld — the God of the Imajica — is not the benevolent creator of Christian tradition but a tyrant who has imprisoned the Dominions in separation to maintain his power. The Reconciliation is simultaneously a magical ritual and a theological revolution — an attempt to overthrow a corrupt God and restore the unity that existed before his intervention.
Collecting Imajica
First edition (HarperCollins, London, 1991): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $50–$150
- Very good/very good: $20–$50
- US first (HarperCollins, 1991): $30–$80
- Signed: $100–$300