For rising young lawyer Cal Griffin, it's just another day in the Big City—until the lights go off...for good. Suddenly packs of pale crouched figures are stalking the darkened subways, monsters prowl Times Square, and the people all around Cal are...changing. Similar weirdness is happening everywhere, from the dank, cold heart of a West Virginia coal mine to a remote lab in South Dakota—where a team of government scientists has unwittingly invited something catastrophic into the world—to the highest levels of power in Washington, D.C. And Cal Griffin is not the only one struggling to comprehend the surreal, devouring chaos surrounding him—nor the only one who will be forced to accept a new role in this brave new world of nightmare and wonder. For the forces bled from the stilled machines are fueling a consciousness both newly born and ancient—and more than one unlikely hero will be needed for the titanic battle between the darkness and the light. This first collaboration between talented writers Marc Scott Zicree and Barbara Hambly is the beginning of an innovative fantasy series. An enthralling and entertaining read, Magic Time mixes supernatural forces and elements of classic epic-quest fantasy with modern technology and contemporary themes in a fascinating "What if?" scenario that presents a world where science is turned on its head as magical forces—and strange new creatures—blossom in its place.

The world has changed—forever. Across America, technology has been eclipsed by magic, and people are changing into the embodiments of their darkest desires and deepest fears. In this new time, former lawyer Cal Griffin has united a small group of outcasts to battle the chaos. Searching for the source of the unholy phenomenon—and to save Cal's sister, Tina—these unlikely heroes make their way cross country, led by the visions of a lunatic and the fragile song of a blind man. Hidden within ancient burial mounds, a secret paradise may offer the chance of hope, if they can find Tina. But first they must make their way to Chicago to battle a primal monster . . . and the darkness within themselves.

The Barnes & Noble Review Magic Time: Ghostlands, the third and concluding volume of Marc Scott Zicree's Magic Time trilogy, is a post-apocalyptic epic comparable to Stephen King's The Stand. It follows visionary Cal Griffin and his misfit band of followers as they travel across a much-transformed America where machinery no longer runs and the surviving populace are slowly being mutated into nightmarish "post-humans" with terrifying powers. On a quixotic mission to find his abducted sister and somehow defeat the mysterious Source, a secret government project that inexplicably stopped all technology and for all practical purposes destroyed modern civilization, Griffin is joined on his quest by a group of unlikely protagonists. Colleen Brooks, a mechanic turned warrior; expatriate Russian doctor Viktor Lysenko; bipolar mystic Herman Goldman; and federal agent Larry Shango. All want to defeat the Source for their own personal reasons; but will this army of outcasts be able to destroy a godlike entity that grows stronger by the hour? With masterful characterization, nonstop action, and a fascinating plot that seamlessly intertwines science fiction, fantasy, and horror, Zicree's Magic Time trilogy (Magic Time, coauthored by Barbara Hambly, and Magic Time: Angelfire, coauthored by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff) should definitely be high up on the reading lists of anyone who is a fan of post-apocalyptic classics like Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer and Robert R. McCammon's Swan Song. Paul Goat Allen