I just finished Imajica. This book came in at a whopping 1,100 pages, took me a while to get through it. You can also buy the same story in 2 books, something I probably should have done (I always take a small break between books). Imajica is one of those books that is so unique it's hard to compare it to anything. It's a unique experience, like reading Hyperion or Lord of Light. Those that have read those know what I'm talking about. Barker was influenced by a dream to write it, and you can see that in its weird landscapes and fantastic creatures. Basically, there are 5 Dominions in the Universe. 4 of them lie in the Imajica, while Earth was cut off some thousands of years ago. Earth is the Fifth Dominion, and all the wonders of the Imajica are lost to it. In the Imajica, people are capable of using magic, and there are a variety of different races and creatures. There is a God named Hapexamendios that rules from the 1st Dominion. It is a mixture of Fantasy and Steampunk, where cars and guns are found alongside magic and monsters. The main character takes a quest through the Dominions till he finds that he will be the savior to re-unite Earth with all of the Imajica, bringing our world into a world of Magic and unlimited possibilities. He must learn the use of magic and gather allies, as well as fight against those who would stop him. I loved the book, although I found the 2nd half to be much slower and less interesting than the first. However, it does pick up near the end and has a pretty awesome ending. However, for those that have also read the book, there are a few things I don't understand: Why did Hapexamendios want to destroy the Imajica? It seems he wanted Gentle to reconcile the Dominions just so he can burn them all down? And then what after that? I also don't understand why the firebolt he used to kill Celestine came back around and hit him. That seems really silly. I understand the Imajica is a circle, but it just didn't make sense to me. They said Hapexamendios was from the Fifth, which means he was a human. How did he become a God? From my take of it, Hapexamendios needed a human to reconcile the Dominions so he could finally declare Judgement Day, similar to how Christians see the end-times, the rapture, Final Judgement, etc. Then Hapexamendios would create a new world for his faithful. Gentle was an unwitting pawn in this game, but was saved by facing his Father directly and leading to his destruction and avoiding Judgement Day. Now Goddesses would rule over the Imajica, and it would be a different world, one of healing and love.
Hapexamendios is not just a god. We are meant to engage Him as the god of the Abrahamic tradition. Remember that he gave us the Hellraiser films based off his novel, The Hellbound Heart (1986). Barker shows exactly zero concern for blasphemous deployment of narrative, and this is no different. Barker is flipping the script on the modern take of the kindly, fluffy sky daddy who is made of love and love and love and only wants 100% complete obedience from His creations, without any kind of evidence for the meetness of that obedience, because that's the faith part, the part that makes it "real" in modern Abrahamic circles, the obedience without evidence. Narratively speaking, in Imajica, Barker plays a game of opposites and subversion as he delivers his take on what "really" happened. Creator becomes Destroyer Savior becomes Conqueror Omniscience becomes Ignorance Also, notice how the inclusion of Celestine brings the backstory dynamic more in line with religious traditions that contain both a God and a Goddess. The God-Goddess combo was the most persistent European arch-nemesis of early Christianity during its formative years. Another subversion. God creates Man becomes Man creates God You didn't mention this one, but the nature of Pie'oh'pah is one of the biggest clues as to what Clive is doing in this book. Pie'oh'pah is obviously a shapeshifting angel who starts out as Gentle's would-be assassin and then later becomes his occasional lover. Pie'oh'pah has no gender or default shape of which we can be sure, but spends most of its time as a strikingly handsome, muscular black man, in direct opposition to general depictions and engagements of angels under modern Abrahamic terms, and I emphasize modern because angels have been many a varied thing across time. The fact that Pie'oh'pah has no set default form would seem to be a meta-acknowledgement of that fact. Gentle is the Second Coming. Whether one engages that as literal or symbolic doesn't really matter. There can be no doubt that Barker has created a kind of follow-up story to the one we know, a fanfiction, so to speak, painting things in a very different light, thus... The Son of God does not come to deliver us unto Him, but to save us from Him. Don't look for a direct, one-to-one relationship between every little point in Imajica and the Bible. Clive feels no obligation to deliver such pedantic literalism. He's already subverted the entire story, so why not deploy the full arsenal of creative license?
