Doctor Strange

A brilliant, arrogant surgeon loses the use of his hands in a car accident. Conventional medicine cannot repair them, and the career that defined him is over. He turns to the mystic arts as the only road left.

The book is a collection of self-contained short stories, not a single narrative. It belongs to a 1970s anthology series, drawn from the Doctor Strange run of 1972 to 1979.

The surgeon's change into a sorcerer is the thread that ties the tales together. The Ancient One acts as his mentor, and he has to build a new purpose in a world of occult practice that is unfamiliar to him.

The mood runs dark and mysterious, with an atmospheric, tense tone. Occultism, ancient magic and cosmic horror feed the stories, and the choices a sorcerer faces are often morally ambiguous. Neither romance nor graphic violence drives the collection.

The question running through the stories is whether a man who built his identity on skill and pride can become someone else once that skill is gone.