Bøker av Jim McPherson

The tragic tale of the doomed, but ever-defiant band of perhaps not-so-miraculously re-embodied supranormals known as the Damnation Brigade continues in the second mini-novel extracted from the open-ended saga of 'Wilderwitch's Babies'.Wilderwitch may be D-Brig's last living member. The main reason she has survived so long is that Demon Queen Lilith got hold of her not long after her and her fellows' expulsion from Subcranial Temporis at the conclusion the War of the Apocalyptics. The Witch may or may not realize this. Lethal Lily certainly does. When the former becomes pregnant by Saladin Devason, the Master of Weir, in 5980 Year of the Dome, the latter does too; albeit less 'by' than 'via'. As the conceptive mother of the mortal Sed-sons so essential for the mystical maintenance of the six thousand year old Cathonic Zone, what separates the Inner from the Outer Earth, she figures she's unique in the universe. As such, she further reckons she doesn't need the Witch to help bear her latest Sed-son. She may be right about that.Unfortunately, she seems to have forgotten that daemonic babies, like those of their equally earthborn faerie cousins, tend to feed on their mothers … while still in the womb. Having, in her hubris, rid herself of the Witch, she's forced to takes on other hosts before her unborn child finishes devouring her from the inside. By the time she realizes the Witch somehow survived the drop from high above the overgrown zone of the Sleepers, it may be too late for her.Then again demons are remarkable, if highly flammable, creatures. None more so than their ages old, wholly mindful and evidently indestructible queen.

Despite often violent suppression by forces blinkered by monotheistic absolutism, at the height of the Renaissance seekers after secrets are determined to discover all there is to know about the universe. Yet, right here on the earth beneath their feet, there is no greater secret than that there is a Cathonic Dome. The second greatest secret beyond the Cathonic Dome is that a continent the size of Africa lies underneath it. The barrier between the Inner and Outer Earth is anything except sealed hermetically. Most of the reason for that is down to the atomic ruination of the Laughing Lands of so many pantheistic paradises in 4825 YD, when Morgan Abyss ruled the Weirdom of Cabalarkon as its Master. Some sixty-five decades after claiming credit for abolishing the Death's Head Hellion - and more than fifty-plus decades after finally realizing their long-held dream of Panharmonium - Thrygragos Everyman and his just as immortal firstborn, the Unities of Chaos, Order and Balance, are horrified to learn that the plagues and poxes ravaging the Inner Earth are far from natural. They're deliberate attempts to end its days. Utopian biomages, the daemonic or chthonic creatures they've sometimes made, and their Hellion allies, armed as they are with the thrice-cursed Godly Glories, have been venturing outside the Dome for centuries now. There they've been ensnaring seekers after secrets and bringing them back inside. It's not their brains or curiosity they're after, though. It's the diseases they carry.These are the Contagion Collectors. Their aim is to destroy devil-gods by killing off those who would worship them - virtually everyone alive beneath the Dome.And it all started in the European year of 1284 with the Rat Catcher of Hamelin.

The success of Thrygragon, in 4376 Year of the Dome (YD), brought such hope to the seemingly immortal devil-gods worshipped throughout Sedon's Head, a continental landmass the size of Africa that lies concealed as much beneath the Cathonic Dome as within it. Devils, though, love the freedom to do as they please above all else. Instead of the anticipated dawning of Panharmonium, sibling rivalries, intertribal jealousies and the ever-unpredictable whimsies of the Devil above them all ensure that an endless era of take-no-prisoners empire-building ensues. It is now 4824 YD. For most of the previous century forces loyal to the death-gods of Lathakra, King Cold and his triplet sister, the Scarlet Empress, have sought to replace the Head's reigning sense of hopelessness with another Golden Age, that of their own. Equally godlike devils such as the Unity of Chaos support them. The Unities of Order and Balance don't - but they also do little or nothing to stop them. With the Thanatoids' armies running rampant over the Upper Head, Star Sedon abruptly ceases to shine. Defense of his traditional power base, Grand Elysium, of necessity defaults to his privileged but essentially ordinary and thus effectively impotent priesthood. If they succumb, the Lathakrans next target is certain to be the Utopian Weirdom of Cabalarkon, Sedon's Devic Eye-Land.The Death's Head Hellion, its Hate-Sedon, demonically-empowered Master of Weir, suffers no illusions to the contrary. Supported by earthborn multitudes from Hell on Earth, and with the remarkably still-functional, originally extraterrestrial weaponry at the command of her and her Trinondev Warriors Elite, she counterattacks mercilessly, utterly heedless of the consequences.In the almost 5,000 years since the Moloch Sedon preserved it from the Genesea, his Hidden Headworld has never experienced such approaching apocalyptic devastation.