Levels

by Karl A. Fischer

Leonard Marcs is temp-to-hire at the Adventurer's Guild, and like most of the freelancers in Castaway, has no memory of coming to this dodgy little town at the bottom of the Multiverse. All he gets are terrible quests, and when he's not blackout drunk, he's being accosted by strange entities who seem to know him. His friends think he's being paranoid, but when Leonard finds a fish nailed to his door, it awakens forgotten memories of a sinister conspiracy, sending him on a reality-shredding voyage across the mysterious Levels.

158 pages, Paperback

Published August 31, 2020

About the author

Karl Fischer is a writer and crazy person living in Colorado with his wife and child. He likes bad movies, fantastic movies, black coffee, and books that make him cry. He is the co-editor at Excession Press.

Reviews

[Danger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Karl Fischer's 'Levels' comes at you weird and wild, introducing the reader to a multiverse that, while taking on the flavors of fantasy and sci-fi, feels totally fresh. There's nothing out there quite like this book. Maybe it's Fischer's prose that did it for me, which is both eloquent and lyrical - or maybe it was the insouciant tone of the story itself, mostly lighthearted in its execution, except when it decides to stop pulling punches, after which it delivers plenty of thrills and catharsis along with the laughs. Parts of it are more demanding than others. There's a lot of characters and world-building and "rules" to keeps straight, and the action ramps up so quickly at times it's hard to know which way is up. But in the end, the payoff is great, and every beat of this thing sings. This book is strange and wonderful and, to my mind, Karl Fischer has established himself as an interesting and original voice on the indie fiction scene. Give this a read and you won't be disappointed.

[Alexander Pyles · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an utter blast.

Longer review to come, but this was a wild ride!

[Karl Fischer]

This book took me almost a decade to write and went through 5-7 different versions, depending on definition. In many ways, obsessive revision is what this book is all about. It's also about temp jobs and love and talking fish and drinking your sorrows away and being in your twenties.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is positively delicious. Every minute that it took Fischer to write this was worth it. Every single piece has to be perfect for something like this to work, but it is and does. Absolutely wonderful.

[Jeff Beesler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Levels Ascends to a 5-Star Funfest

This book excels as a form of pure escapism. This whole book felt like a cross between A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and the Office. If you ever needed a book to take your mind off things for a while, this would be among the first ones I'd recommend to you. I hope to read more of Karl Fisher's work in the future.

[Lilyn George]

Review to come.