The Antithesis by Terra Whiteman (2011)

Smashwords / Amazon / Author’s Site

3/5 stars

Description:
This is a story about God and the Devil, but not how you were taught to believe.

This is also a story about love and hate, and the suffering both can bring.

This is about rights and wrongs, and all of the spaces in between.

This is about revenge, courage, death, passion; with no villains, no heroes… only those left scorned.

This is a story about Heaven, Hell, and the Jury that holds them together.

This is The Antithesis.

Justice Alezair Czynri is the newest recruit of the Jury, a group of powerful beings who reside in Purgatory and enforce the Code between Heaven and Hell. However, Justice Czynri could not have come at a worse time. A storm lays just over the horizon…

One that brings with it a war.

Review:
The Antithesis is impossible to peg to a subgenre. The tropes are a mash between seinen action manga (Japanese comics for a 20+ demographic) and supernatural urban fantasy. I’m a sucker for gorey over-the-top Rule of Cool fight scenes, so when I read the scene where Alezair gets turned into a Judge and can turn his hands into scythes, demolish armies, and regenerate lost limbs by eating dirt and convulsing painfully, I knew I had to read this book.

The original take on the battle between Heaven and Hell is thrilling to read. It’s a world where angels and demons are more akin to other creatures (ala humanoid races in space opera) rather than idealized ethereal beings. The demons are the former slaves of the angels, and the war they wage on the souls of lesser beings (such as us. We’re just one portion of a multiverse and we’re not very important) is essentially a giant (rigged) chess game to sort out the politics of these two groups. Judges are another kind of creature whose role is to keep score. It’s a messy shades-of-gray universe where the angels seem like jerks and you can’t help but sympathize with the demons, and I have to give kudos to the author for the fresh perspective.

This is a badass book in many ways. I liked many of the demon characters, I’m awfully fond of the crazy fight scenes, and there’s some interesting worlds in the multiverse (including a weird west one) but I couldn’t completely get into it for two personal reasons. Firstly, vampire-like urban fantasy tropes don’t interest me, and secondly, I couldn’t suspend my disbelief for some of the world-building.

There aren’t any vampires in this book but the tropes are similar. Alezair gets turned into a Judge because he lusts after Leid and he becomes her guardian. Judges live for hundreds of years, have to kill a lot of people, and some even mourn the fact that they’ve turned into monsters. All the higher creatures have hierarchical societies, they drink wine and smoke constantly, and there’s a lot of intrigue and unrequited love angst. I know a lot of readers like these tropes, but I generally just can’t bring myself to care about these kinds of conflicts (especially the love angst) and unfortunately this book wasn’t the exception.

All the higher creatures act like 21st century North Americans, complete with desk jobs and alcohol abuse. It humanizes them, but there wasn’t an explanation as to why they all organized their societies in this specific way, so my brain often kept on questioning it instead of enjoying the story. Even a wry comment like “Once the multiverse developed the art of bureaucracy, it engulfed everything in its path and escape was impossible” would help with the suspension of disbelief, but it doesn’t exist.

The other dimension I couldn’t wrap my head around was gender. The narrative asserts the biological and historical differences between these creatures, but they did not vary in gender dynamics and they dealt with femaleness rather strangely. Leid is the Commander of all the Judges, and according to the narrative, she’s highly respected and feared, intelligent, and physically powerful. So I raised my eyebrow at the fact that she could be cornered to a wall by a male subordinate and be paralyzed with fear, and there’s an after-the-fact horrified reflection on the man’s part that he could have raped her. But why does a woman like Leid have to fear rape if she’s as powerful as the narrative asserts her to be? She’s a hands-turn-into-scythes killing machine. I wouldn’t expect that the Terminator could be harassed in the same way, so why would she by virtue of her being female?

I know other readers will find this book very enjoyable, but because of matters of personal taste, I can’t say this is one of my favourite books of year. World-building is one of the most challenging parts of speculative literature, and it’s much easier to do so when it’s based on common settings, and much more tricky when from an original secondary world. Like I said, the points I raise about the world-building are very subjective, so don’t let that stop you if you won’t find them distracting. If you like over-the-top fight scenes, intrigue and tragedy akin to vampire tropes, and a unique concepts on the battle between heaven and hell, then you might consider this worth a look.

You might like this if you like…
Dark and Troubled Pasts; over-the-top Rule of Cool manga-style fight scenes; vampire and urban fantasy tropes; unrequited love angst; multiverses with a space opera vibe

If you’re interested in this book, you’re in luck! The sequels, Book Two Alpha and Book Two Beta, are already out on Smashwords, Amazon, and other retailers.