City of the Watcher

This is the reissue of the long out-of-print Weird Luck in the City of the Watcher, originally written in 2003 and published in 2012. The intricately interwoven books of the City of the Watcher trilogy take place a few months before the opening of the Weird Luck webcomic. In this first book we follow Aleck, a teenage stoner from Earth, as he stumbles through a portal into a world of strange sorcery. He soon finds himself swept up in a revolutionary movement fueled by mysterious prophecies which, absurdly, seem to include Aleck himself. As Aleck's skepticism grows, he travels through a half-ruined magical city with an insurrectionary vanguard including a feral shapeshifter, a cannibal warrior-prophet, and Akaz the fire-breathing wolf-god. Their adventures lead to an explosive climax, which we revisit in books two and three of the trilogy, showing the events from wildly different points of view, each retroactively revising the reader's impressions of the last.

All Aleck Woad wants to do is chill in his interdimensional Archive. Putter around with his collections of knickknacks from many worlds, scrawl in his notebooks, maybe take the occasional jaunt across the multiverse with his wife and partner-in-crime, Beth. In the back of his mind, though, he has always been haunted by his first trip offworld as a teenager. He had unwittingly helped catalyze the bloody Battle of Melkhaios, in which hundreds of innocents were massacred. He had met his own future self, meddling with the battle, trying to stop it. And he had seen his future self gunned down by the Reality Patrol. He usually does his best not to think about it. But one day, Aleck and Beth find themselves without warning back in Melkhaios. And they soon discover (as sometimes happens with interdimensional travel) that they have gone back in time, arriving sometime before young Aleck and the Battle. This is Aleck's unexpected chance to undo the bloody events he witnessed as a youth - if he can change history before his own death catches up with him. Unfortunately, changing your own past is easier said than done....

The Cannibal-King, glimpsed at the end of Weird Luck and Time Traveling Blues, takes center stage for this tumultuous finale to the City of the Watcher Trilogy. Now we hear the story straight from the mouth of this horseman of the apocalypse. Fleeing a post-apocalyptic fascist USA, revolutionaries Jack and Beth Waghalter find themselves transported to the wilderness outside the City of the Watcher. The wild folk of the desert and forest greet him as their messianic "Cannibal King" as foretold centuries ago, destined to lead them against the Watcher, the warlock tyrant who rules over them all. Jack and Beth are stumped what to do. Clearly no one in this equation shares their ethics or politics. But the evils of the Watcher grow increasingly evident - along with the real possibility of defeating his army. If they can overthrow an evil dictator, shouldn't they? Even if they don't know the world well enough to anticipate what might fill the vacuum? Desperate for a win after their tribulations on Earth, the temptation is strong.... What's the worst that could happen?