Through the accidental misuse of a supposed self-improvement book, Roger Lincoln transports himself to an alternate Earth where he is befriended by a faltering magician and a sarcastic dwarf, and is confronted by a malevolent sorcerer and his bizarre coach driver, inhabitants of an enchanted swamp, threats in a cursed desert, a deranged witch, marauding machines, franchised bandits, and weird magical happenings, as he seeks an iconoclastic master magician who may be able to return to him to his own Earth.