Magic Time
Magic Time • Book 1
by Marc Scott Zicree, Barbara Hambly
Why You'll Love This
The lights go out across America and what replaces civilization is somehow both terrifying and mythic — this is apocalyptic fantasy with genuine teeth.
- Great if you want: urban fantasy meets road-trip apocalypse with folkloric transformation
- The experience: sprawling and atmospheric, building dread through multiple shifting perspectives
- The writing: Hambly's influence shows — grounded characters anchoring wildly imaginative chaos
- Skip if: you prefer tight, focused narratives over wide ensemble casts
About This Book
One night, the lights go out—not just in New York City, but everywhere—and they don't come back on. What follows in Magic Time isn't a straightforward apocalypse but something stranger and more unsettling: a world mid-transformation, where people are shifting into something other than human, where the rules of physics have bent to accommodate something older and less forgiving. At the center is Cal Griffin, an ordinary man forced to navigate a landscape that no longer operates by ordinary logic. The emotional pull here isn't just survival—it's the question of what we become when everything familiar is stripped away.
What distinguishes Magic Time as a reading experience is the deliberate layering of its world. Zicree and Hambly resist the urge to explain everything at once, instead building dread and wonder in equal measure through character perspective and precise, grounded detail. The collaboration between two seasoned genre writers shows in the balance between plot momentum and genuine psychological depth. Each storyline—spanning Manhattan, West Virginia, and beyond—carries its own texture and voice, making the convergence feel earned rather than mechanical. It reads like a myth being assembled in real time.