Author Description

LEVEL FOUR: HARDWARE, PET SUPPLIES, SPORTING GOODS Time moves in a line, but not a straight line. In the Inner Kingdom, time is as hopelessly snarled as a child's scribble. Nomads and refugees from two millenia cross paths, purposes and swords over access to the past, present and future. They reside in the trash of a thousand collapsed timelines, far from the prying eyes of ordinary folks. LEVEL THREE: SALE ITEMS, FOOD COURT If the Netherworld is the dustbin of history, it's crawling with roaches. Psychopaths from the future roam with guns the size of totem poles. Shaolin monks mix it up with giant firebreathing infants. Four deposed sovreign sorcerers scheme with and against one another, while speed freak hitmen and homeless robots just try to get by from day to day. LEVEL TWO: REAL ESTATE, ORGAN DONATION Need to stage a live-ammo war exercise on a recreation of Catherine the Great's beside table, scaled up to a thousand times its actual size? Talk to Thurston White -- or, at least, talk to his head. And don't miss the Inner Kingdom's suspiciously useful jungle, the hotel where the decor is fabulous but the gravity's unreliable, and the forest haunted by the ghosts of every war ever fought -- and every war that could have been fought. LEVEL ONE: THE GATEWAY TO HELL Watch out -- the Inner Kingdom can turn into a free-fire zone without warning. After all, it's the key to time travel, and time travel is the key to the Secret War. GOING DOWN?