Lands of a Distant Truth — James Tallett

Thieves raft down a river, using mud to explore their artistic talents. A warlord, reborn from the dead, allies with wife-eating demons to rebuild a failed empire. Six friends, an elite military unit, are sent with the army on a march of conquest. Each set in a brand new world, all born from the mind of the same author, but wildly different in tone and scope.

But these three are not the only worlds in which he has written. Indeed, settings tumble forth from his fingers with annoying regularity (annoying to him perhaps most of all, since he has to keep writing in all of them). There are telepathic mercenary wolves, fighting to rebuild their livelihood. There is a huddled mass under siege, protected most of all by three great warriors relying on weapons from a lost past and hoping for a better future.

Some of these characters, these windows into the story, are good men, working to save what they love. Others are vagabonds and conquerors, who care not a whit for the whims of others, except where they get in their way. Some are comedic, engaging in a running battle with fish. Others are desperate, despair eating at their hearts.

Here, within Windows to Elsewhere, these new worlds and the men and women who inhabit them come alive in the imagination of the reader, each saga a new perspective on what fantasy might go.