The Shadow Master

Hi, how are you? Yes, I am talking to you, the reader of this book's description. Okay, I get it, fourth-wall breaking is overdone. Get over it. This book, Villains Rule, is a fantasy action-comedy which you have to hear. Not because it redefines the genre, far from it. But rather for what it contains. A villain's tale. How often do you get to listen to a story where the villain is the protagonist? No, not an anti-hero, or a brooding monster, nor a hero thinly disguised as a villain. And not evil. If you want evil, take that nonsense to therapy.

Jackson Blackwell, The Shadowmaster, is in over his head this time. After his last adventure, where he tore fantasy novels a new one, Jackson has to deal with the repercussions of angry gods, angrier conspirators, and the wrath of his pregnant girlfriend! Thanks to a godly decree and a crafty clause, Jackson has been banished from his home. And the only universe kindly enough to take him in is one infested with comic-book-style superheroes and supervillains.

Jackson Blackwell, the Shadow Master, returns. And lo, the multiverse shall tremble. Why? For someone dared to kidnap his daughter. While on a consultation trip to a sci-fi dimension, Evie Blackwell is taken by hired mercenaries, and Jackson is stranded on a remote planet. Using all of his devious and deadly tricks, Jackson must escape, assemble his team, and travel through space and time to find those responsible. Jackson will stop at nothing to prove his commitment to his family while wreaking his patented, comedic havoc in a way that only a man-turned-god can.

The time has finally come for Sophia to enact her vengeance against one Julian Jackson Blackwell. The name of the book is Villains Defeat, after all, and it is a story of team building, betrayal, plots-within-plots, and a how-to guide for toppling an empire. So, yeah, we’re kind of riffing on “the heist” genre in this one.