World of Tiers

From a multiple Hugo Award winner: Four more novels in a brilliantly imaginative series. In the second half of the World of Tiers series, Kickaha embarks on a journey to the eternally shifting landscape of the Lavalite World of Lord Urthona-and the ultimate clash with his arch nemesis. On Earth, Kickaha and the Lord Anana pursue a rogue Beller called Thabuuz. They thought they had wiped out the last of the bio-lab-generated artificial intelligences created by the Lords, but it seems one has escaped through a portal to Southern California. Thabuuz must be found before he can spawn more Bellers and revive their war against the Lords. But even though he came from Earth fifty years ago, Kickaha no longer recognizes his former home, now ruled by a hostile Lord known as the Red Orc. Leaving an unwelcoming Earth, Kickaha is trapped on the strange planet he thinks of as Lavalite World, and the only way out is a single gate, located inside Urthona's palace. But the stronghold moves as readily as the dangerous terrain, making survival an unlikely prospect. After facing harrowing challenges and finally returning home to the World of Tiers, Kickaha is led into one last trap. He'll have to confront the fearsome enemy who has been hunting him all along-and the fate of the pocket universes lies in the balance.

The first three adventures set in the amazing realm created by the Hugo Award–winning author of Riverworld. His past a mystery and his present unbearably mundane, Robert Wolff is simply trying to buy a new house in Arizona when he stumbles upon a secret doorway through space and time and enters the World of Tiers. Made up of ascending levels of jungles, plains, medieval cities, and, at the top, a Garden of Eden, and populated by fantastical creatures, from nymphs and centaurs to merpeople and strange amalgams nonexistent on Earth, it's beyond anything Wolff could have imagined in his previous humdrum existence. And when his youth is restored in the bargain, it seems he's truly found paradise. But there are dark forces in this new world, and Wolff is plunged into an epic quest up through the tiers, accompanied by Paul Janus Finnegan, another earthling, now known as Kickaha. Wolff's journey to find Jadawin, the Lord of this world, will lead to answers about his own identity-and determine his fate. Wolff and Kickaha will face off against feuding Lords-who hold the power to control private worlds of their own design-and the depraved Bellers. Devices originally created in the biolabs of the Lords, the Bellers are now conscious entities waging war on the Lords and their "pocket universes." As they infiltrate the bodies of creatures throughout the World of Tiers and hunt down the Earth-born, the survival of all the worlds hinges upon the battle between the strangers from Earth and enemies disguised as their allies.