Indie Book Club discussion

A close one this month for the fantasy BotM. D.P. Prior's Shader series opener. Everyone is in for a treat with this book.

Nice! I won a paperback copy of this book a while back and have been looking forward to reading it!

Got my paperback out and ready to read!

I am part way through this. Opening gets bogged down a bit with a lot of characters / places / sects etc. which makes it a little confusing. Well written, however. I just hope DP isn't sacrificing flow for gloss :)

I reviewed this one a while back and had a similar reacion to the beginning, Rob. A subsequent reviewer sharply disagreed with me, so I feel slightly vindicated by your observation. As I mentioned in my review, this is an excellent book if you can get through the beginning.

Thanks to everyone for taking a look at this book. It has quite a history and I'll be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.

The biggest complaint I get re Cadman's is the terminology. There's a long history behind that, dating back to an earlier version of the story, The Resurrection of Deacon Shader.

In Resurrection, Shader is a Christian knight, sworn to the Pope. He's very much a templar-esque Solomon Kane type. It was edited by fantasy guru John Jarrold, who hated it because it contained real world religion (he's a Dawkins devotee apparently). I therefore decided to rewrite the saga from scratch and brought in a lot of world-building ideas I'd been developing for some time. I also threw the lurking presence of Dr Otto Blightey, Liche Lord of Verusia, into the mix. He's responsible for a lot of the obfuscation.

In Cadman's, the world history is long and complex (my timeline goes back about 3000 years). There are very good reasons for the changes in terminology, some of which become more apparent in book 3, The Unweaving, and more in the latter parts of the Chronicles of the Nameless Dwarf.

Most, if not all, the terms are derived from Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. Many have a decidedly occult history in terms of usage.

That said, it's proven a stumbling block to a handful of readers so far. Those with a previous knowledge of occidental mysticism have loved the inclusion of these terms, and others seem to get used to them after a while. There have been a few people who have shared B's experience of it getting easier/better once you settle in. Ultimately, the names don't matter that much, but I guess it can be hard working out how to pronounce Ipsissimus and Cyncocephalus in your mind when reading.

Unfortunately (commercially speaking) such unfamiliar terms do lose me some readers at the first hurdle!

I considered simplifying the terms, but it lost a whole layer of meaning when I looked into it. I finally settled on another way of giving readers an easier ride: I wrote the spin-off Nameless Dwarf books, which are much more of a beer-swilling romp. They've had a lot more commercial success as a result.

I read through some of Cadman's and the sequel a few weeks ago, having not looked at them since they were published. I still like them very much and wouldn't change them a great deal. In my later works, I prefer to restrict POV to fewer characters (usually up to four per book). Cadman's has more than that, and that's something I'd consider changing if I wrote it now.

The Shader books seem to have acquired a niche audience, and that works well for me. I remember how many people hated Stephen Donaldson's work in the 80s (and still do), but I enjoyed his Chronicles of Thomas Covenant immensely.

OMG, I had a love/hate relationship with Thomas Covenant! His self-deprecating attitute was thoroughly frustrating and more times than not it had me putting down the books or yelling at them for him to, well, to coin a phrase, 'Grow some balls!'.

Thank you for the heads up re: the history, DP. I think from a story POV I will enjoy it immensely, and have proceeded a little further into it. I think, also, that I have a few things going on at once, which is hindering the amount of attention I can give to it.

~Rob

That is a great bit of background D.P. Thanks for sharing that!! As soon as I finish up the books I'm reading now I'm going to get through the Nameless Dwarf stuff and the second Shader book.

That's great to hear, Scott. I'm closing in on the end of the nameless series -- that will be a nice place to take a rest for a few months!

If anyone has any questions on the background/history etc, ask away. There are tons of notes lying around doing nothing!

Where did you find your cover artist D.P.? You have some awesome covers so I'm just wondering if it's a friend or you went through Deviant like a lot of people.

My first artist, Mike Nash (Cadman's Gambit and Resurrection of Deacon Shader) turned up on a Google search. He'd just started out at the time and was working for cheap! He's now a big Games Workshop/Wizards of the Coast artist and I could no longer afford him.

I found Anton Kokarev on Deviantart. This guy is awesome - perfectly in tune with my books. He also does Games Workshop commissions and film work, but he's still within my price range.

Finally, I found Patrick Stacey when I was bored one day and lazily typed in Shader as a Google search. It took me to a sketch he'd drawn of Shader after reading Resurrection. I contacted him and asked if he'd like to try out some covers and he's been working on Nameless Dwarf books ever since.

The first Nameless cover (Ant-Man) was a gift from the writer C.S. Marks.

I have a book by C.S. Marks, Nameless Dwarf, Resurrection, and that were some of the first books I bought the day I got my Kindle. I'll admit that when I got a review request from you on my blog it was like a milestone to see an author I recognized asking me for a review.

It was C.S. Marks who first told me about Kindle. At that point I had only published on Lulu and was hoping to achieve 40 lifetime sales! I think I got to 15.

D.P. - if this was going to be made into a movie, and you were responsible for casting the movie, who would you select to play the characters?

James Purefroy would make a good Shader (he was good as Solomon Kane).

If he were alive and into acting, G.K. Chesterton would be Cadman. Timothy West would probably work well in the roll.

I'd have loved James Mason to play Sektis Gandaw. Also, Peter Cushing, or Jeremy Brett (I know, they're all dead).

Elias Wolf: Patrick Troughton (or his grandson, Sam); or Paul Kaye.

Lallia - a young Jenny Agutter.

Mater Ioana: an old Jenny Agutter.

Third spear carrier on the left: Me.

I'll have to think about the others.

D.P. - how old is Shader? Character ages are eluding me here. Some characters are supremely old and others are young, but then I keep reading references to ancient occurrences that they were privy to.

Also, I wanted to mention how much I appreciated you putting those maps in the front of the (paperback) book. I've referenced them quite a few times just so that I can keep all the locations clear in my head. I loved that comment about the people who loved to grind shark fins up into soup. I flipped back to the maps, thinking, "Chinese"? Yep!

The big ancient occurrence characters refer to is the Reckoning, which occurred over 900 years before the start of Cadman's Gambit. Everyone knows about it, the same as most people know about the last ice age, the Reformation, the two world wars etc. A few of the characters in Cadman's Gambit were alive at the time, but Shader isn't one of them. I was going to add something to that statement, but that would be revealing rather more than I should at this stage. There are some huge revelations in book 4!

Shader is, to all intents and purposes, in his late thirties. I have a Shader short in preparation in which he is considerably younger, fighting in the ill-fated campaign against Otto Blightey in Verusia.

Re the real world references, the Earth of the Shader universe is definitely our Earth in the future. You may have noticed that the language of Aeterna (Aeternam) is Latin. This is no accident. I can't say too much without ruining the later books, but certain features of classical culture have been given a new life, if somewhat distorted. Later, in the world of Aethir, the Latin is much more explicit, as are some of the old world religious references.

I've been preparing a "Shader Companion" for the past year. It has a complete timeline and articles on mythology, history, characters etc. I've been delaying its release until the first trilogy has been published (later this year, with any luck).

For me, the most interesting history concerns the shadowy figure of Otto Blightey, liche lord of Verusia. He was something of a celebrity in the middle ages. Some of that is revealed in book 4 of Shader, and a little more in book 5 of the Nameless Dwarf series. It will all be revealed in the planned "Autobiography of a Liche."

So I just reread Ant Man as part of the Nameless Omnibus and it made so much more sense to me after having read Cadman's Gambit. There were so many character references that just confused me the first time through that were much clearer now.

I'm getting back into your universe with Nameless then really looking forward to Best Laid Plans

Thanks, Scott.

Re Ant-Man, once the fifth and final book in that series is finished (July, hopefully) I'm re-editing all 5 books to remove most of the Shader references in preparation for my agent trying to sell it. I'll leave the originals as they are as there's a lot of fun references to the other books, but they'll possibly alienate readers who come to Nameless fresh.

Quick comment...

I just wanted to say again how much I'm enjoying this book. It's just going slower than I normally go. Can't read this at night 'cause this is a paperback and would require light, which would wake up wife. Happy wife = happy life. Awake wife = unhappy husband. :)

Anyway, I'm really enjoying the setting, how the story is set in the same world as ours, but just way in the future. I flipped back through what I read looking to see if maybe I missed a reference to how far in the future and didn't see it. Probably just blind. Anyway, my question is how far into the future is this story set from the present?

Big J

Big J!,

Here's some excerpts from the timeline I'll be publishing in the Shader Companion. This is the first time any of this material has been seen outside of my house!

I've cut some of the spoilers and a lot of the detail, but it should give you a good idea of the history.

Cadman's Gambit starts in 3,167 AD.



TIMELINE 



No Time The begetting of Nous by Ain

Pre-History The Creation of the Cosmos by Nous and the separation of the Supernal Realm from the World of Creation by the Void.

2,598 BC The Fall of the Aeonic Triad from the Void.

2,666 BC The Rape of Eingana by the Demiurgos and the casting of the Demiurgos into the Void by the Archon. The Demiurgos forms the Abyss, thus preventing contact between the cosmos and the supernal realm beyond the Void.

2,698 BC Birth of the Cynocephalus and his Creation of Aethir.

2,699 BC Creation of the Dweller by the Demiurgos and the forming of Gehenna, the route into Aethir from the Abyss. The Dweller settles in the deepest parts of Aethir on the threshold with the Abyss.

1,777 BC Creation of the Homunculi by the Demiurgos. They settle in Gehenna just below Aethir and influence the world above.

1,254 BC Creation of the Hybrids on Aethir by the Cynocephalus.

1277 AD Birth of Otto Blightey in England. Becomes a great contemplative in the Old Religion.

1,307 AD Otto Blightey starts hearing whispers from the Dweller of Aethir in his dreams and follows the advice. He comes to know the Homunculi and their wisdom.

1,456 AD Otto Blightey murders the Champion of the Sword of the Archon (Hafran Thrall) and uses it to enhance his own power.

1,461 AD Otto Blightey is burned at the stake and the Archon buries the Sword in the catacombs beneath Rome. Otto’s skull survives and is placed in a casket of Scarolite by the Archon and cast into the Abyss.

1568 AD Birth of Sektis Gandaw in Germany.

1587 AD Sektis Gandaw studies under Dr John Dee in England.

1599 AD Sektis Gandaw receives communication from the Abyss: Otto Blightey, who becomes his mentor. He learns how to contact the Homunculi of Aethir.

1666 AD Sektis Gandaw flees England, pursued by the authorities for his experiments upon humans. He flees to Aethir in a plane ship sent by the Homunculi.

1700 AD Creation of the Dwarves of Malkuth on Aethir by Sektis Gandaw.

1904 AD Birth of Maldark.

1968 AD Sektis Gandaw begins to capture the essence of Eingana on Aethir. She flees in the form of a snake and is protected by the Hybrids.

1969 AD A group of dwarves led by Maldark form the Guardians of Eingana and protect her and the Hybrids from Gandaw.

1979 AD Maldark betrays the Hybrids and returns Eingana to Sektis Gandaw who petrifies her in amber.

1980 AD Sektis Gandaw starts to experiment with un-creation using the Statue of Eingana. Maldark realises his mistakes and betrayal of the Hybrids and mounts an assault on Gandaws mountain with the Hybrids. All but four of the Hybrids killed and Maldark’s whole order is destroyed. Maldark captures the Pax Nanorum and casts it into Gehenna. He becomes known as the Fallen, and heads into Gehenna to begin his eternal sailing. The four remaining Hybrids travel to Earth in a stolen Plane Ship and hide beneath the Homestead Rock in Sahul.

2,104 AD Ernst Cadman is born in England.

2,099 AD Sektis Gandaw returns to Earth and goes underground in the US, using the vast resources to construct a giant accelerator below ground and brings Otto Blightey back from the Abyss.

2103 AD Otto Blightey and Sektis Gandaw come into conflict and Otto is driven back to the forests of Germany by Gandaw’s machines.

2,128 AD Australia reverts to the Dreamer name Sahul and is the focus of resistance to the technocracy of Sektis Gandaw.

2,155 AD Ernst Cadman becomes a disciple of Otto Blightey in Germany.

2,163 AD Birth of Adoni (“the Sunset”) in Sahul.

2,172 AD Initiation Adoni in the magic of the Dark Side of Aethir by the Hybrids. He is renamed Huntsman after the Great Man-Spider, leader of the Hybrids.

2,178 AD Birth of Alphonse LaRoche in the South of France to devout Old Religion parents. The family live in the Old Religion ghetto in impoverished and persecuted conditions.

2,201 AD Alphonse La Roche is ordained, one of a handful of Old Religion priests left in Europe.

2,220 AD Birth of Elias Wolf in the Britannia.

2,237 AD Ernst Cadman leaves the service of Otto Blightey and is pursued throughout Europe.

2,238 AD Founding of the Abbey of Pardes in Sahul by Alphonse LaRoche. It is the last refuge of the Old Religion.

2,250 AD Huntsman is given the Statue of Eingana by the Hybrids and ceases to age.

2,253 AD Elias Wolf performs at Global Garden Festival, a neo-hippy festival in the US in opposition to the global technocracy. The festival is brutally suppressed by the authorities and Elias escapes and makes his way to Sahul.

2,256 AD THE RECKONING – inaugurated by the Dreamer Huntsman using the Statue of Eingana. Sektis Gandaw flees to back Aethir in a Plane Ship.

2,257 AD The Templum arises from the ashes of the Old Religion, and quickly starts to flourish under the counsel of a devout friar, Otto Blightey.

2,280 AD The Templum achieves control of Europe and the US and applies the Aeternam model: Aeternam is widely learnt, and the names of countries are changed: US becomes The Great West; Germany becomes Verusia; France becomes Gallia; The UK becomes Britannia.

2,327 AD Blightey steals the Monas (Eye of Eingana) from the Ipsissimus. The Grey Abbot is called in to help and Blightey is driven back to Verusia.

2,337 AD Ernst Cadman arrives in Sahul.

2,688 AD Entombment of the Lost by Dr Cadman

3,007 AD Birth of Aristodeus.

3,118 AD Birth of the Nameless Dwarf (real name unknown) in Arx Gravis on Aethir.

3,126 AD Birth of Shadrak.

3,132 AD "Birth" of Deacon Shader.

3,141 AD Birth of Rhiannon Kwane in the village of Oakendale in Sahul.

3,166 AD Blightey’s demonic/undead army crosses into Trajinot, expanding territory in a long-term plan to reacquire the Ipsissimal Monas. The Elect lead the Templum’s response and Shader leads the charge that wins the day, driving Blightey back once more.

3,166 AD Discovery of the Pax Nanorum by the Nameless Dwarf and the start of his reign of terror.

3,166 AD Imprisonment of the Nameless Dwarf by Aristodeus and the encasing of the Pax Nanorum in polycarbonate crystal.

3,167 AD Start of Cadman’s Gambit (Year After the Reckoning: 908)

Wow! Ask for a year and get a really cool timeline! Thanks! That really helps. Holy cow. How much time and effort went into making that? You know what, better not to know in case I ever wanted to do something similar. Might be discouraging. :)

Hey, one more question. Why was Deacon Shader's birth entry in quotes?

3,132 AD "Birth" of Deacon Shader.

I can't answer that one without seriously spoiling book 3! Thought I'd leave the quotes as a teaser, though. Poor old Shader's a bit of an anomaly.

I was wondering if there was something else to that as soon as I asked about it. Hmmm, now I'm really curious. :)

Thanks for the additional info! That was really cool!

I'm dying to talk about it but it would really ruin the story. Big time.
Re the timeline, it's been developing for nearly ten years. Every now and again I redraft it and flesh it out some more. It's hard keeping it all in my head, but Chateau neuf du Pape helps enormously.

D.P., what's next in this series? Is it already out? How many books do you have planned?

There are six books in the Shader series. You can see all about them at www.dpprior.blogspot.com (lots of nice artwork!)

Books 1 and 2 are already out. Book 3 is in redraft and will be out later this year. Book 4 is almost finished but needs a few scenes adding and a lot of editing. The other two are in note form only.

The Nameless series will be finished by July and then it's on with Shader 3 and 4.

There's also a Shader prequel short story coming out this year (hopefully).

Cool stuff, D.P. Your earlier comments inspired me to take a Googling tour of the occult. Now that I've done that, I think I can detect the echoes of Alistair Crowley (and his predecessors and successors) in your universe. It's a clever angle for a fantasy world that resonates with "reality".

There's a fair bit of Crowley in Otto Blightey, but there's also a lot of St Bernard in him too! Blightey is largely responsible for revamping religion to appeal to the widest number of people. He takes great delight in perverting it with occult terminology and different philosophical streams. The powers that be are either too stupid to realise, or they don't care as long as they are in control.

A lot of this stuff gets unpicked in books 4 and 6, and there is some info about it in Nameless book 5.

Is there something in Book II that hints about Shader's abnormality? I read a line that made me really quirk an eyebrow with some of the discussions of his presence. As a reference point the Huntsman is talking about it with the other unique creatures (at least I'm pretty sure that's where it was mentioned). There was a whole lot going on right at that point and my brain may have melted a little bit trying to wrap my head around it lol.

There is a brief mention of Shader's purpose by the Hybrids when they are losing faith in Aristodeus's plans, but no more than that. The first big hints are in book 4 as far as I recall.

Yeah that would be the hint I was thinking of and for the life of me I couldn't remember Aristodeus's name. Being terrible with names gets old sometimes (especially when you call your new boss by the wrong name to his face lol).

Lol! I've never tried that one! And I'm older than you!

D.P. There is lots of cultural diversity in this book. Are you well travelled? Do you draw knowledge of different cultures from people you know, places you have been, or things you have seen? The way you wrote, I thought you were a fellow Aussie until I read your Bio. I am blown away so far by your ability to emote and your power of imagery. While sometimes I feel some descriptions are a little adjective happy, I admire your skill.

Also, how in the heck do you get the kindle to recognize the page numbers of your novel? I think this is the only book on the kindle where I have noticed page numbers!

~Rob

No idea about the page numbers! I had it professionally formatted.

Yes, I am fairly well travelled. I lived in Oz for over 3 years. I spent time with the Carmelite Order in Melbourne and Sydney, then lived in Perth with my wife and son for a few years.

I also spent seven years in Wales and a few months in the US.

I've travelled a lot in Europe as well.

To add to the confusion, my grandmother was Gibraltarian, with a Spanish mother and Italian father. My wife is American with Hungarian and German descent.

Some of the cultural diversity no doubt comes from my academic days - intercultural theatre was one of my fields. I've also got a background in metaphysics and theology.