Last Exit

American Gods meets The Amber Chronicles in Max Gladstone's Last Exit: A hitchhiker wizard gathers her estranged friends to defend the world from her long lost lover ― and the monsters that return with her.

Imagine that the American highway system is a vast magical network binding city to city. By soaking up magic from intentionally directionless travel, initiates can slip into alternate realities. Stray too far from our America, though, and things get weird. And dangerous. And terrifying.

When visionary mathematician Zelda Qiang was in college, she learned how to travel from one alternate reality to another. Her response was to take her friends on a road trip to strange new worlds. Six of them set out. Only five returned. Zelda’s lover, Sal, betrayed them: she walked into the jags ― sharp cutting shadows like cracks in space ― and didn’t come back.

Now Zelda still walks the road alone, a wandering magus keeping the jags from breaking through. But now Sal is coming back ― with Dark Things in tow.