Beyond the Pale

Travis, a bespectacled barkeep from Castle City, Colorado, and Grace, a regally beautiful ER doctor from Denver Memorial, wormhole their way through a magical billboard into... a Robert Jordan novel. Well, sort of. Sure, in Beyond the Pale, it's a chilling winter--not a sweltering summer--that's gripping the land. And the seals (little stone disks, no less) are weakening on the prison of the Pale King, not the Dark One. But, surprise--Travis finds that he's the first man in centuries to successfully wield the One Power... er, runes, that is... and is the sole hope of keeping the Pale King at bay. Beyond the Pale isn't entirely derivative of Jordan's wildly popular Wheel of Time series: if nothing else, Anthony sets himself apart by having things actually happen in his book. Travis and his fellow earthling Grace end up in Eldh after surviving run-ins with the Pale King's servants on Earth. Grace, mistaken for a fairy queen, is quickly shanghaied as a spy for King Boreas, who has just convened a council of Eldh's rulers. After a series of adventures, Travis joins Grace, and the two must tangle with the mysterious Raven's Cult and a bunch of iron-hearted bad guys who are trying to derail the Council of Kings and hasten the PK's return. --Paul Hughes