Publisher's Synopsis
"A Dark Lord from a world of dream, a dimension much lighter than ours, has caught a whiff of Earth-a dense "metal world" whose rich energy he covets to feed his insatiable blood addiction-and he is on the move to conquer and absorb us all!"
"Who is there to stand against the Lord of Dream and Metal? Only a scattered few . . . some through high technology, others through worlds of dream . . ."
Chuck is paraplegic and mute due to a drug-fueled childhood accident-but his trauma gave him access to an infinite array of dream worlds, which are just as real as ours but physically inaccessible. Chuck explores these realms in the persona of Corak, his dream self. Corak trains in the arts of geomancy with a powerful Shaman who prepares him for an inevitable confrontation with the Dark Lord . . .
Meanwhile, George and Karl are college buddies who've come up with a technology that enables interdimensional travel. Hoping to further human knowledge (and get rich), they've implemented this technology with funding from a shadowy financier named Don and his feisty companion/associate, Marie. In testing the device, however, George is "accidentally" transported to another dimension (or as Chuck would call it, a dream world), where his genius will be tested to its limits . . . especially when the Dark Lord arrives!
It all starts with a dream . . . Please enjoy this excerpt from the opening of "The Lord of Dream and Metal"
The floor was littered with people in a vast array of positions and situations. Many were on beds or carts. Others leaned in heaps against walls, sprawled on the floor, hung from what seemed like mobile frames of various shapes, and some were in boxes and barrels, grotesquely folded to fit in full defiance of the human shape. Few of these people moved; many seemed obviously dead, and yet there was a great sense of life, of sharp expectation in the air, as if everyone there were waiting-no, not waiting, rather listening for something wonderful that was about to happen.
It was then that Corak-perched high above and yet equipped with preternatural vision of all that occurred-noticed what seemed at first to be a large shadow moving slowly and deliberately among the carcasses along the wall on the left side. It was the shape of a man at least twice as large as any body it moved past, and Corak wondered how he could not have perceived it until now. There was a phantasmic obscurity and yet a shimmer of intense clarity to this black man. As if through a zoom lens, the shadow shape rose up in his vision and filled his mind's eye in incredible detail down to folds of skin around the base of the massive neck, wisps of fine black hair curling out from under the hood of a large robe, splotches of blood and flesh hidden in the folds of the robe and cape. The Dark Man, as if sensing someone watching him, turned in Corak's direction and stared straight at him. The strange man's eyes caught the light and seemed to blaze with fires, red and purple and blue. If Corak were breathing he would have caught his breath; as it was, time seemed to stop for a moment . . . but resumed when the shadow man turned away and moved to a body lying on a bed . . .