Finally, Antipaladin Blues

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Tue Jun 25, 2013 3:57 pm

Seriously, though. I went back and thought about it, and the worldbuilding for this novel began almost 25 years ago. Yikes.

But of course, more recently it's gone through a few years of development hell, and barring asteroid strike it's finally coming out. At the printer's right now.

I know many of you have read the promo pdf, and offered some feedback, and for that I thank you. Now I would be pleased as punch if my dear friends here in The Den would reach out and throw cash at me. In return you will get a kickass book with a bunch of awesome illustrations!

Right now only the print version is up on Amazon, but the kindle version is coming soon, and for the moment you can order the ebook at Smashwords. They have a better spread of formats too. Formal release is June 30th, but you heard it here first.

Last but not least, I've been trying to come up with a good preorder special. For my last book I wrote a custom soundtrack with tracks named after the preorder buyers- with a week-old babby I don't think that's going to be possible.

I'm thinking maybe a custom character sheet for the first dozen or so people who buy. Ideas?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Jun 25, 2013 4:04 pm

Congrats!

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Tue Jun 25, 2013 5:11 pm

Fuck yeah. Definitely going to buy this. Been waiting years

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Jun 25, 2013 10:50 pm

I've got some money on mah Amazon from a Father's Day gift card. I'll sit on it til the book's available (it sez temporarily out of stock at the moment). =-)

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Jun 26, 2013 1:02 am

It should only say that until Friday, I think. Meikle was able to successfully order it, I believe. And thanks in advance!

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Wed Jun 26, 2013 1:36 am

Woot! When this comes in, I can say that I now have *TWO* of your books on my shelf. Maybe, I'll even *actually* post a review to the book rather than just saying I will...

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Jun 26, 2013 1:56 am

That means a lot, man.

Fenrisulfr · Post by **Fenrisulfr** » Thu Jun 27, 2013 7:21 pm

I read the pdf ages ago and remember liking it, so I've slammed down 20 whole Canadian dollars to get a physical copy of Antipaladin Blues and, now that I've been reminded of it, 10 A Boot Stomping... (I always did enjoy a good BASIC joke). The eBook price are low enough I might splurge to get the digital copies too, because waiting for books to come in the mail is lame.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Thu Jun 27, 2013 7:43 pm

You are a gentleman and a scholar.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Thu Jun 27, 2013 7:52 pm

You had a soundtrack for 10 a boot stomping, right? Did you do anything similar for antipaladin blues? Or am I thinking of someone totally different.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Thu Jun 27, 2013 7:57 pm

I did record a soundtrack for STOMPING. Haven't had time for that with this book- I think I am going to do custom character sheets for people who preorder.

EDIT: The character sheet preorder is open. Paypal me $10 and you will get a signed and doodled on copy of AB, and a custom character sheet of you as I humorously perceive you. There are 8 slots left. If any of you guys who already ordered it want a character sheet, let me know.

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm

Picked up a paperback copy.

echo

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Fri Jun 28, 2013 9:29 pm

Sweet!

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jun 28, 2013 9:36 pm

Oh, I wanted to point out-- That world is almost as old as I am.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Jun 29, 2013 7:34 pm

I'm in for a hardcopy, but I can't throw money at paypalazon until next paycheck. Think any of those custom slots will be open another week or two?

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Sat Jun 29, 2013 7:49 pm

I'll save one.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Sun Jun 30, 2013 12:05 am

Jigoku: I would totally like an autographed one. I just placed my amazon order a little while before I saw your post.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Jun 30, 2013 1:55 am

I put my order in Amazon today.

No worries bout character sheets here tho. =-)

Red Archon · Post by **Red Archon** » Sun Jun 30, 2013 5:54 am

It's nerve-wreckingly difficult to order your book from here with the means at my disposal, but I'll keep trying. Technically, I could send the money directly to your bank account, but that shit is not exactly user friendly, what with requiring, for example, the fucking street address of your bank.

I'll try to figure this out with Amazon, I think, I'll let you know.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Sun Jun 30, 2013 4:21 pm

Red_Archon: Can you explain what you mean by the nerve-wrackingly difficult part?

Banks like chase actually offer ways of sending money to people without actually needing the other person's bank info. You basically need their email address and send them an invite and they process the funds on their side.

If not, there's always google wallet, paypal, etc..

But again, I don't really understand what your particular difficulty is.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Sun Jun 30, 2013 5:05 pm

Hey, since there seemed to be some confusion...

If you paypal me $10 (jessgulbranson@gmail.com) I will mail you an autographed copy of the book and a custom character sheet.

If you have already bought it on Amazon, I'll be glad to send you a custom character sheet as a thank-you for everyone here being so supportive.

Last but not least, anyone who has already read it, I'd be totally grateful if you could leave a nice review on Amazon!

Thanks again, everyone.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Jun 30, 2013 9:33 pm

Did my paypal (from Akukoomori) come through?

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Tue Jul 02, 2013 9:47 pm

I am so in for this. Payment sent, sir.

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 5:39 pm

Book finally arrived yesterday - finished it a bit ago. Will post a full review later, but overall pretty great. A-.

echo

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 10:37 pm

As promised, a brief review (spoilered as it discusses the entire novel, including ending):

Whenever doing anything in the postmodern genre, there is a strong temptation to err on the side of making your work clever instead of making it entertaining. Brian Clevinger's Nuklear Age is a great example of what happens when you emphasize the former over the latter (and worse, make a deliberate shift from one to the other at the climax of your work). Antipaladin Blues is a surprisingly good work - although it suffers from several problems, it is telling that the strongest criticism I can produce of it is "I want more of what you have delivered", which means that the author has overall done a pretty great job. That being said, I get a strong sense that this book either suffered from too much editing, or not enough.

The Good:
Antipaladin Blues manages to do one of the rare things of art - taking something we've seen before and making it new and interesting purely by virtue of how well the work is put together. The strongest sense of achievement comes not from an individual character, action, or setting, but from the cohesive tone of the work overall. Like 2010's The Horns of Ruin, it posits an interesting world where "god" doesn't mean what you might think, and makes the idea of personal power something more than a metaphor without feeling technical or clumsy - but it elevates the story beyond that with the salty addition of a vulgar, anachronistic perspective that perfectly spins the tale into something new and wonderful. The Chapter 1 Title "The League of Extraordinary Motherfuckers" conveys this better than anything I could have ever hoped to write. I laughed early and often while still being engaged by the action and story.

Kannon is one of the most engaging characters in the work, perfectly conveying the mix of nihilism and tragedy that any veteran tabletop RPG player will be more than familiar with. The way that he approaches problems is both engaging and revealing, and most of the time his behavior and motivations are, if not clear, at least plausible. The overall conflict of the story is also pretty absorbing, especially once we get a glimpse of the broader picture in something other than foreshadowing. The addition of the Cnidari helps to flavor the stew a bit, since most of the other demographics in the story are left to the reader's imagination.
The Bad:
This book is short. At 152 pages, it feels almost like a novella - I think I finished it, front to back, in a little over 90 minutes. That wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that a lot of the story is painted in the broadest strokes possible - Avery only has about two paragraphs of characterization dedicated to her at all, and Frank is cruelly robbed of the screentime he deserves. And he's not the only one - Wendell, Andrew (whose name we don't even learn until the last chapter!), and Chamberlin are barely sketches. This would be okay if they weren't important or engaging characters, but they are - Wendell's offscreen escapade at the barracks raises a lot of questions and potential, but then it's never mentioned again and nothing comes of it. There are also places where description is totally absent - we never get even a vague idea of what Lord Thorpe looks like, despite his appearance being noteworthy enough that several characters remark on it.
The Ugly:
The chaos whores. These characters are so totally pointless that they're never described, given names, or have anything important occur in relation to them - they're unnecessary on every level. The Bank of Chaos sets up all we need to know about Chaos on its own, and their only purpose in the narrative is to set up a running gag that only occurs twice before disappearing forever (which makes it a crawling gag at best). In a larger book, it might be forgiven, but with so little space to use their waste of it is criminal - even more so than taking a name as awesome as "The Chaos Whores" and utterly wasting it on characters that are lame.

And most importantly:
Too many awesome things happen offscreen or in an undescribed manner. Virtually every awesome fight or climactic encounter in the last third of the book is under-described, and the most egregious of this is the battle between Kannon and Hathaway. I was thoroughly amped up for a blow-by-blow, and when the entire conflict was reduced to a one-liner and a single sentence of non-description, I was angry. It was like the scene at the end of The Warrior's Way where the climactic final encounter between two master swordsmen is replaced by a flashback to one guy's puppy dog he had as a kid. That's just not cool.
Final Grade:
The accuracy with which Antipaladin Blues completely nails its targeted tone is worth a ton of points, catapulting it immediately above the ranks of most rote sword-and-spaghetti paperbacks. The audience's intelligence is never insulted, and only once are we treated to a lame narrative cop-out (when Kannon survives the final cataclysm without even commenting on it). The characters are engaging and memorable, and the plot, though a bit of a mash-up of His Dark Materials and Spawn, of all things, works perfectly with the setting. I'm left with a sense of remaining potential - the hope that there might be more books in this plotline, and that they might give us a broader, much lengthier glimpse into the world of D. Overall, I give it a grade of 90/100 - an extremely solid early effort that will hopefully presage rock-solid works to come.

echo