Alexander C. Irvine’s debut novel, A Scattering of Jades, is a rich and entertaining tale. With no sign of first-timer nerves, Irvine brings together such disparate elements as Tammany Hall, Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave, P.T. Barnum, Aztec gods, riverboats and New York in the mid-1800s to create a glorious adventure. While all these well-known people and places might overwhelm other writers, Irvine moves serenely among them, using characters and settings when necessary and dropping them immediately whenever his story demands it.

Irvine is like a real estate agent working areas no one else has discovered. He knows that one of the secrets of a good novel is location, location, location, and he fearlessly takes the reader down the rivers, into the caves and through the cities of the still-coalescing 19th century United States. One of the most interesting threads of the novel is the tale of Stephen Johnson, a historical figure whose real-life story Irvine entwines with his fiction. Johnson, a guide at Mammoth Cave, had a knack for discovering new caves and was responsible for finding and naming many of the caverns that are now famous visitor spots. In a particularly dark and almost claustrophobic section of the novel, Johnson explores a new cave. The scene is frightening, and the action gets even stranger when he goes off the beaten path and discovers an Aztec mummy hidden far from where anyone else had ventured at least for the last several hundred years. The mummy is an Aztec god who, now awakened, wants to bring about the end of the world, and needs a few small things including a child sacrifice to make it happen.

A Scattering of Jades is not a run-of-the-mill quest novel, in which a plucky band of brothers takes on the Dark Lord of So-and-So. Here, saving the world is left to a half-dozen or so seemingly unconnected people.

Irvine can be favorably compared to Tim Powers, especially Powers’ historically flavored novels such as The Anubis Gates, yet A Scattering of Jades instantly sets Irvine apart from his influences and allows him to carve out a space for himself.

The year 2004 will undoubtedly go down as a singularly exciting—and bittersweet—year for the millions of Stephen King’s Dark Tower fans anxiously awaiting the series’ much-anticipated finale. More than a quarter of a century after the publication of the short story "The Gunslinger" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (October 1978), the genre-transcending saga that has been called King’s magnum opus will come to its climactic conclusion with the release of the final two books: Song of Susannah this month and The Dark Tower in September.

The seven-volume Dark Tower saga—essentially an epic fantasy—is a bit of a departure for the prolific King, who is best known for his wildly popular horror offerings (The Shining, Carrie, Cujo, Pet Sematary, etc.). The story’s central character, an enigmatic, solitary gunslinger named Roland Deschain (a cross between Clint Eastwood’s legendary Man With No Name of Sergio Leone’s 1960s spaghetti westerns fame and the quasi-historical King Arthur), is on a quest to find the Dark Tower, the nexus of a trillion different realities, before it is destroyed. Those who stand in his way are summarily killed. But during his travels through time, he meets allies who will eventually make up his ka-tet (a group of people joined by fate): Eddie Dean, a former heroin addict and drug runner from 1987 Brooklyn; Susannah Dean, Eddie’s wife, a civil rights activist with joint personalities from the when of 1964; and Jake Chambers, a sixth-grader from 1977 New York. Together, they battle the evil forces trying to topple the Tower and bring about Apocalypse.

Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah picks up immediately after the events of Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla. Roland and Eddie, via the Unfound Door, travel to 1977 Maine in search of a rogue bookstore owner with an invaluable resource to be used in the quest. Meanwhile, Jake and Father Callahan, another key figure in Roland’s quest, are thrust into 1999 New York City to find Susannah, who is not only possessed by a demon but also pregnant with a baby of mysterious origin. The unborn baby is "perhaps the most important child to ever be born . . . including Christ, including Buddha, including the Prophet Muhammad." This child, aptly named Mordred by the demon inside Susannah, is prophesized to destroy Roland. Can Jake and Callahan find Susannah before she has her baby? And more importantly, can they keep the baby out of the hands of Roland’s nemesis, the Crimson King?

King drops a bombshell of a plot twist at the conclusion of Song of Susannah that will force readers to re-evaluate their take on the entire saga and leave them tottering on the edge of the mother of all cliffhangers. Fortunately, readers will only have to wait a few months to find out what King has in store for the final installment in his chronicle of the gunslinger and his quest.

Hauntingly surreal and almost supernaturally enthralling, King’s Dark Tower saga is a monumental work of fantastical fiction created by a master wordslinger. The series is historically significant for a number of reasons—the eye-popping retail sales figures, the equally eye-popping value of first editions, etc.—but perhaps its most important (and fascinating) attribute comes from its prominent place in the author’s extensive and storied canon. Not unlike legendary British fantasist Michael Moorcock’s Skrayling Oak, the enormous tree that holds his entire Multiverse in its branches, King’s Dark Tower is the thematic hub around which many of his other novels revolve. The Stand, It, ‘Salem’s Lot, Insomnia, The Talisman, Bag of Bones, The Eyes of the Dragon—all have strong connections to the Dark Tower. (For example, Father Callahan was also featured in ‘Salem’s Lot as the priest investigating the horrific deaths of his parishioners.) Longtime fans delight in piecing together the incredibly elaborate mystery that is King’s Dark Tower universe, and the series has lengthy printed concordances to help readers keep everything straight.

And to think it all started with this unassuming sentence: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

Paul Goat Allen is a freelance editor and writer in Syracuse, New York.

Laurie Marks’s rich and affecting new novel Earth Logic is the second book in her Elemental Logic series which began with Fire Logic (warmly reviewed here in May 2002). Thirty-five years ago, a refugee Sainnite army invaded the land of Shaftal. However, without reinforcements, which aren’t coming, the occupying army won’t be able to hold on much longer. Because they have maltreated the Shaftali, they now fear reprisals.

Karis, an ex-blacksmith and one-time drug addict, is the long-hidden Shaftali leader. She is a huge woman and has power within her to listen to the earth and to shape objects. She has gathered an odd family around her: Zanja, her lover; Leeba, her daughter; a Sainnite deserter army cook; the former Shaftali general; and a Sainnite Seer who is unable to drink tea or liquor or eat anything rich for fear of unbalancing his mind. This small group must fight the Sainnites, an outbreak of plague and even their own countrymen who want war.

One of the most affecting sections is when Karis’ group finds a hidden library and an old printing press. They use the press to publish a book that reminds the Shaftali that they unlike the occupying Sainnites are a hospitable and generous people. This is one step on Karis’ path to the nonviolent defeat of the Sainnites. As Emil, the former Shaftali general says, “War cannot make peace.” The nonviolent choice is a strong and difficult one, and not everyone in Shaftal supports it especially those who have lost family and friends in the occupation. However, it is what Karis wants, and in earth logic “action and understanding are inseparable,” so, although it seems impossible to overcome the warring factions, she is determined to make it happen.

Earth Logic is a thought-provoking and sometimes heartbreaking political novel which absorbingly examines the dynamics between two groups of people. Good bread, wine and friendships alone may not save the world, but they make the doing of it much more palatable. Gavin J. Grant is co-editor of The Year’s Best Fantasy ∧ Horror, to be published this summer by St. Martin’s.