The ends of the earth

From the creeper-clad jungles of Guatemala to the windswept peaks of Nepal, from the arid urban wasteland of Detroit to the haunted holocaust of Vietnam, Lucius Shepard's massive new retrospective explores the ends of the earth with an arresting narrative intensity and virtuosic verbal exoticism that are unique. Shepard's previous Arkham House collection The Jaguar Hunter was acclaimed as a landmark volume in the development of modern fantasy, and The Ends of the Earth is an even finer testimonial to the emergence of a major American writer.

The world of Lucius Shepard is a world inhabited by phantoms, but are such entities literal metaphysical demons or mere marauders of the imagination? Is the protagonist in ' 'The Ends of the Earth" confounded by ancient Mayan magic, or is he the victim of incipient mental breakdown? Have the survivors on "Nomans Land" discovered an archetypal realm of transcendent reality, or are they in thrall to the hallucinogenic wraiths of their own tortured souls? Does the narrator in "Bound for Glory" pass through a demonic landscape that lays bare the human heart of darkness, or has he merely uncovered his own unbridled libido? In Shepard's inimitable artistic vision, one can never be sure: "the life of one world was the shade of another . . .