‘I Smolder With Paternalistic Rage’: A Review of “Darkblade Assassin” by Andy Peloquin
The goddamn worst book I've ever opened in my life and I was enthralled the whole time.
You know you’re in for some real gold when your protagonist is stating to the audience that if he introspects, the story would be over.
I sincerely thought I knew what I was getting into when I bought something called “DARKBLADE ASSASSIN,” with a discount Artemis Enteri looking ass on the front with — I’m gonna assume — the titular Dark Blade in his hand. I figured it’d be some embarrassingly cringe but deeply enjoyable brooding edgelord adventures, like a Spawn comic from 1996.
I could not have known what horrors I had brought upon myself. I have opened the Necronomicon of bad writing. And I read self published erotica on Amazon constantly.
Putting it simply; This book is fucking terrible, but in a way that’s kind of hypnotic. It is packed to the brim with empty, frictionless fluff, as our hero effortlessly angsts and fights and broods, padded like a midterm paper at midnight, until you’re just begging for the next plot point to happen. And then when it does happen, the story is just so predictable and obvious that you become fascinated. To quote a friend of mine on Twitter, “Are we sure this book wasn’t written by an AI?”
Reading it is like watching a Lifetime movie with friends, with everyone holding party favors in anticipation for the shocking reveal that the husband did it. It is goddamned awful, page to page, and a total hoot.
The Plot In Short
“Darkblade Assassin” is the story of — uh, hang on, I’m getting word now that this is not actually the title of this book, one moment.
Oh, okay.
So “Assassin: A Dark Epic Fantasy Novel (Book One of the Darkblade Cycle)” is the story of an unnamed assassin in the city of Voramis. Wracked with plot-blocking amnesia and a Soul Edge he got from Target, he calls himself the Hunter of Voramis, and works as a hitman for hire slash avenger of the night, sworn only to kill the guilty. You would think the profit motive and the desire to do good would at some point come to odds, but despite it being an acclaimed ‘dark fantasy novel’ , this never comes up.
The mob of Voramis, which seems to be inexplicably 95% funded by organized sex trafficking, sends him on a hit at the same time as his support network starts dying off. A conspiracy is unveiled where the chief of police and the leader of the mob is revealed to be not only the same person, but a demon in disguise, on a quest to conquer the city and the world for himself. The Hunter (who is actually a half demon) rejects his offer to join forces and conquer the galaxy as brethren, is beaten and left for dead, but when he is at full strength, he’s gonna go on a roaring rampage of revenge and Kill Bill.
And then a bunch of stuff happens that doesn’t matter.
I promise I’m not being dismissive — it really doesn’t. The book presents itself as a one man war against the mob, a kind of “Sir John of Wick” style story, but the story (interminably padded all the while with redundant scenes) never makes any of those skirmishes matter, to the characters or world.
For example; a major scene later in the book is when the Hunter infiltrates the pleasure palace a place that is (according to the protagonist) one of the major income sources for the city’s mob, the Bloody Hand. The process of him infiltrating it is skipped over — masks, and paying people off to look the other way, don’t worry about it— and he chases everyone out of it with a stink bomb, then burns it all down. Putting aside that the mob got absolutely screwed by a ten year old’s prank kit and a book of matches, you think, “Wow, I bet that really pissed off the mob, huh?”
You would think! But as it turns out, head demon guy was somewhere else preparing for something unrelated and Hunter finds out through coincidence in a different scene that there’s an evil plot in the works and rushes to stop him. So the whorehouse is unrelated entirely, and burning it down had no effect at all on anything, despite the book telling you how critical it was to the mob.
Imagine if John Wick’s attack on the church was followed up by him heading into the final sprint after Iosef. That’s the entire middle third of this book, just Stuff That Happens that has no bearing on plot nor does it develop any characters. So trust me, I’m sparing you from a lot of pointless filler. Dead people speaking to the Hunter, fists tightened in a rage, brooding on rooftops, and many, many, many prostitutes.
The Bad (And Oh There’s So Much)
The Hunter didn’t have to be a bad character — I was 100% in for the bullshit of a kind of Elseworlds Batman, hence why I bought a book with that cover in the first place. But he — and the whole book — radiate a terrible insecurity and lack of commitment to any one aspect. Without the ability to grow, because he cannot have visible flaws, Hunter is just tedious.
The Hunter is described as a loner, deeply disconnected from humanity, bitter to the end and with a deep streak of cruelty to his victims. The book starts with a rescue of sex slaves — all female, naturally — and he rescues them and gives them wealth to run free. Reasonable enough, perhaps a deep affection for women that breaks his hard exterior.
But the book then spends a third of its text showing you just how wonderful he is as a person. He gives to the homeless and the lepers, he’s become a benefactor to a young girl living at the local temple, his spy network are all good friends to him, he’s deeply committed to never killing an innocent…the list goes on. Even times where he questions himself, characters reassure him that he’s right and good and proper.
At one point, he has a heart-to-heart with a crazy homeless man who is nursing him back to health. This exchange comes from that:
The Hunter is fully aware he’s incredibly old and tired, and yet, when questioned about who he is, he is totally without answers or justifications of any kind. A speculation, but the writer strikes me as incredibly young, which means when he is given philosophical questions he can’t fathom, he answers like he, the writer, would. This sensation of ‘the writer is the main character’ radiates off the whole book.
For example, this happens after one of his successful hits:
Nothing says ‘a real man’ quite like fucking a hooker after a successful bit of wetworks. Man, this guy is so cool. I wish he was my dad.
But, benefit of the doubt here. Maybe his good heart or streaks of selfishness puts him at odds with the bleakness of the city, and he’s punished for his caring nature with an unwinnable situation. As it turns out, we definitely bought a Mary Sue character, which means he is superhumanly capable at all times.
Hunter never once runs into trials and tribulations that give him difficulty, neither subterfuge nor in combat, and it makes an already boring story grind to a halt. If you have a proper name, Hunter might have some difficulties with you. If not, no matter who you are, you are wet paper in his path.
Killing the shit out of unnamed goons is a feature of fantasy novels, but the technical combat usually involves an exciting rise and fall, presenting you with stakes and danger and making your leads hustle. Even when the Order of the Stick is bumping off giants and hobgoblins, they have skills and weaknesses. Roy is a genius front line fighter, but struggles with ranged combat. Haley can do a lot of damage with her bow, but needs assistance to hit vitals. Varsuvius’s magic solves problems as fast as they arrive, but often run a risk of hitting his own allies. They have to think through problems, protect their back flank, and strategize, even when it comes to a bunch of giants blocking a passage.
The Hunter meanwhile has the technical capabilities of John Cena. He simply decides to win, and then does. The only reason he loses is because the plot says so.
With no physical danger and no risk of character flaws, Hunter is exactly the worst kind of lead— the writer’s baby, far too precious to give him weaknesses or even just make him kind of grumpy, and too scared to have him fail through faults of his own or some kind of incompetence. After all, what if someone added your book to TVtropes? Best to make sure your horror movie leads stand back-to-back with guns pointed into the distance, thus removing all tension so we can jerk off over the competency porn.
Even stuff that theoretically could be clever is just massively missed out on. The Hunter is a master of disguise thanks to ‘alchemical masks.’ The reveal of the demon being a shapechanger that allows him to be both the captain of the guard and the mob don comes about halfway through the book. Since the actual skill of acting is never addressed, your imagination is left to wonder how is it someone can put on disguises so effortlessly.
Ergo, bam, the thought hits — he never once thought about his faceless nature, and it turns out it’s due to his demonic heritage altering his features subconsciously. Right? Nope! We just move right along from this infuriatingly obvious hook, and it is never addressed. He is a master of disguise because his character sheet says he is.
This kind of insecurity and fear of criticism radiates through the whole book, mixing with the 100% unblinking sincerity and giving you a fascinating look into the writer’s mind. All the fascinations and fixations are on full display, and none moreso than the puerile, perverse obsession with the dark side of sex, rape, and prostitution.
Repeatedly — to the point of farce — the book keeps talking about sex work and rape. Hunter rescues women from sex trafficking boats twice, every bar and inn explicitly has tavern wenches for sale, streetwalkers controlled by detestable pimps appear repeatedly, the pleasure palace is the mob’s primary earner, half-demons like himself are (of course) a product of war-rape…It never seems to end.
When he takes down the high-dollar pleasure palace, there’s even a woman tied up in a BDSM rigging, left to die, that he rescues easily from fires he set. This character never appears again.
This kind of juvenile perversion is charming if it’s tempered with restraint and understanding. But I’m not sure that the writer understands what it says about his precious omnipotent OC (or what it says about him) that women in his world seem to never exhibit sexual agency of any kind. Sex is always on a leash, held by someone else — either power structures that exploit women, or the Hunter who nobly cuts the rope without expecting repayment. A single hooker with a heart of gold would be an unironic blessing in this exploitative, childish garbage.
This kind of paternalistic misogyny, where women are purely decorative, permeates the entire text. There is one female gangster with a name, and she’s an ambiguous love interest for our hero. The rest are either children or prostitutes, minus a handful of nameless grunt combatants, who read like they used to be men but he changed to women in editing. Perhaps he realized a 100% male gang minus one very fuckable designated love interest was kind of, you know, weird.
Oh and said female gangster lieutenant? The one he has romantic tension with? Here’s what Hunter thinks when he meets her.
This would be a perfect opportunity to have a Matrix ‘I thought you were a guy’ story beat, where Hunter’s misogyny is challenged, but no. To Hunter— and the writer — women are purely defined by their sexual proclivities. A female gangster is a whore or a madam, and worse yet? He’s right, because she runs the pleasure palace, which comes into play later when he looks for her to kill.
If there was any doubt that the writer simply has yet to examine his Christian, paternalistic misogyny, this next scene absolutely rips it to pieces and throws it out a moving car.
During a fancy dinner ball, Hunter is in one of his fancy personas as Lord Anglion, oafish and rich noble. To engineer a duel with his target, a noble named Lord Dannaros, he accuses his wife of being unfaithful and having an affair with him as Anglion. Simple enough deception and ruse to force the mannered people into bloodshed, right?
Well, about that.
So Hunter is horrified by rape and coercion, but he’s willing to have sex with a woman repeatedly under a fake name and disguise, to further his own “noble” goals, as well as for a lark.
So noble and righteous. The Hunter would fit right in at the LAPD!
Wrapping Up
There’s a flood of other stuff that I could complain about, like the ghosts that assist him who are underexplained, or the overexplained lore that’s both boring and convoluted, or the fact that the five agents of the Hand are barely characterized (if at all), or the female lieutenant’s coup that is mentioned once in the ending and affected nothing, or the redundant ten plus scenes of his adopted daughter’s spirit telling him to avenge her. Again, this is that stuff that I skip over because it does not matter.
But these are all just ornaments on a fundamentally dead tree. Even if all of these were cleaned up through the editing process, the writer simply does not understand Chekov’s gun, which means every scene is balanced entirely on his hopes to shock and impress you with the Hunter’s brilliance.
In one scene, Hunter does a raid on a mob boat bringing a ton of goods into the city. I think it’s more young women for the sex trade, but I can’t remember and I don’t think shipping drugs or weapons or money comes up once. He starts a fight with the elite soldiers in heavy armor, and they pursue him onto the boat into a corner.
The next page:
This ‘offscreen setup’ nonsense happens repeatedly. At one point, he’s talking to his supplier, and the prose quite literally simply does not say what he’s buying.
Imagine for a second an edit of Tomorrow Never Dies, where they just delete the scene of Bond being given his gadgets from Q. Remember when he tricks the guy into tasering himself with the cellphone? Well now it has a flashback afterwards showing you all the stuff his cool phone can do. But not that it can drive the car! You’ll find that out after the car chase.
And this keeps happening. At one point he’s being pursued by bearhounds, monstrous trained guard dogs with paws and jaws like bears. And how does Hunter escape these? With a whistle and a scritch behind the ears, because he had been visiting them for weeks just in case they were sent after him. Are you at the edge of your seat yet??
In the conclusion, the Hunter of Voramis finally gets into the final stage Ulduar and is able to challenge the raid boss. He’s taken captive because half-demon blood is the key to unlocking a portal to the demon world (Yes, Andy Peloquin, I also enjoyed Blade starring Westley Snipes). It turns out there’s three demons, not just one, and they’re working together. Hunter escapes effortlessly, gets his dumb knife back, closes the portal, then has a final sequence of fights.
A female gangster lieutenant who he didn’t kill (but danced with for hours at a ball, for some reason) intervenes in the final battle with the big bad, and after killing him, they have romantic tension like a pair of waffles warming in the toaster. Hunter Biden leaves the city with a half-demon child in tow for new adventures in the sequel I will not be reading.
Was that as confusing and disappointing to you? I assure you, my skipping over details like ‘who the hell is the half-demon child’ or ‘why did they dance together’ or ‘why does the dagger do that’ doesn’t actually make it less confusing. The writer is coasting on vibes, and such questions are simply not important to him.
Taken as a whole, Darkblade Assassin (because I refuse to call it its full name) paints a picture of a very enthusiastic young writer, excited by his tabletop adventures, striking out on his own to wow the world with his storytelling capabilities. Who else would be so genius as to implement stink bombs and explosive barrels in a story?
Unfortunately, this book clearly never had the friction of editing, and thus we’re left with this immature, aimless, insecure, self indulgent mess, one that only had to reach the highs of Spawn and instead landed somewhere closer to The Room. A deeply weird and empty story that is nonetheless fascinating to behold in its badness, and educational in what not to do as a creative.
This is not to say that the writer should not have written this book — bad art is the first step to creating good art, after all — but no creative force ever improved without the aide of a community to critique and give shape. Darkblade Assassin is what happens when you skip that part of the process, fully believe your own hype, and let your ego run rampant.