The Great Game

The complete WWI alternate reality trilogy, featuring a realm where humans can be gods, and an Englishman is called to be a liberator.

Past Imperative

In the summer of 1914, Edward Exeter, a young English gentleman, awakens under police guard—grievously injured and wrongly accused of his friend’s murder. Meanwhile, the youngest member of a penniless acting troupe has been taken prisoner by loyal minions of a corrupt, vengeful goddess in the alternate realm of Nextdoor. The two are part of an ancient prophecy in Nextdoor that has divided the realm’s ruling deities into warring factions. It’s all a game—a deadly contest of skill and manipulations that ruthlessly creates wizards, destroys human pawns, and transforms ordinary men, women, and children into something more . . .

Present Tense

In the midst of the horror of the First World War, a stranger falls from nowhere into the mud and death of Flanders battlefield—bruised, babbling, and stark naked . . . with a remarkable story to tell. The Great Game—the timeless diversion of human gods, a ruthless contest of treachery, magic, betrayal, and manipulation, created to relieve the tedium of immortality—goes on . . . 

Future Indefinite

Young Edward Exeter has spent five years trying to escape the magnetic and powerfully magical pull of the Great Game, which has designated him as its most important player. But war and bloodthirsty intrigue rage on both sides of magical portals and across worlds, and Exeter can resist his destiny no longer. He accepts the mantle of Liberator that has been thrust upon him, and the decision turns old friends into foes and old enemies into acolytes as he is surrounded by murderous plots and betrayals. But this is not the uninformed Edward Exeter who came naked into this hidden realm years ago. He has lived the Game and learned it well—and he intends to play it boldly to its shocking, worlds‑shattering conclusion . . .

Praise for The Great Game trilogy

“Duncan has a wonderful knack of conjuring up wacky scenarios and making them believable and fascinating.” —Kirkus Reviews on Past Imperative 

“It features gritty, well-developed characters, several of whom change and grow believably in the course of the book.” —Publishers Weekly on Present Tense
“The conclusion of the trilogy The Great Game resembles its predecessors . . . in being tightly written, intelligent, and original.” —Booklist on Future Indefinite