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"Imagine a world in which the last Ice Age never ended..."
So begins author Jeffrey E. Barlough's introduction to his Western Lights series, one prepared specially for this website.
The "Western Lights" books are set in an Ice Age America that might have been, had historical - and prehistorical - events taken a different course. The imagined landscape of the series encompasses the western coast of North America, from what is now lower British Columbia to approximately San Diego.
The novels - Dark Sleeper (2000), The House in the High Wood (2001), Strange Cargo (2004), Bertram of Butter Cross (2007), and Anchorwick (2008) - have been widely praised by readers and reviewers alike, and are known for their imaginative setting, eccentric characters, droll humor, and unconventional storylines.
Author Barlough likes to point out that the books are as much mystery novels as they are fantasies - mystery novels which happen to take place in an imagined, alternative earth where magic and the supernatural are as real as the Ice Age monsters that prowl its lands, skies, and seas.
"Although the books can be viewed as mysteries with a fantasy setting, or as fantasies with a mystery setting," Barlough explains, "it is the mystery element that I work out first when designing the story and characters. It is liberating for a mystery writer to be allowed to include elements of fantasy and the supernatural in his books."
In a marked departure from common practice, Barlough has constructed each volume of the Western Lights series as an individual, stand-alone story with its own plot line and its own cast of memorable characters. Occasionally a character from one book may reappear or be mentioned in another; in general, however, the novels are complete in and of themselves and need not be read in any particular order.
"Although there is one exception to that," Barlough says. It seems that the fifth novel in the series, Anchorwick, can be viewed as a sort of "prequel" to the others. "In Anchorwick I have returned to the scene of Dark Sleeper - the ancient city of Salthead and its fabled university. The time, however, is some thirty years before the events of Dark Sleeper, and certain characters from that novel reappear in the new one as their younger selves."
For a preview of this latest Western Lights adventure, click here. Or click on the News button for word of the upcoming sixth book in the Western Lights series, A Tangle in Slops.
The Western Lights books are available for sale from Amazon.com and its affiliated retailers.
Editor's Tip. Readers often ask: are the Western Lights books set in Britain or in America? For those new to the series click here to read author Barlough's specially-prepared introduction to the Western Lights books and learn about the world of "the sundering."
Acknowledgment. Our thanks are extended to Mr. Gary E. Barlough, brother of the author, for his assistance in the preparation of this website.
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