Thank you for the music!

This is to thank each and every one of you who took the time to read the full manuscript of Iron Gods online and a tenfold thank-you to those who wrote a comment with your feedback, every single one of which glowed with praise.

I believe that’s what they call ‘sweet music to my ears’, so to use an Abba line (I’ve not seen Mamma Mia yet but am looking forward to it), thank you for the music.

According to the counter, one thousand nine hundred and eighty one (1,981) separate readers logged in to the Iron Gods blog and read through to the end. That’s pretty amazing for an online serial that wasn’t publicized anywhere at all, was exclusively by-invitation only, password-protected, and only up for 12 days!

What’s even more amazing was that every single person who read it seems to have loved it unequivocally! There wasn’t a single negative comment in the bunch, and that’s truly gratifying to me. This book took me two and a half years to write, is a major departure from anything I’ve ever written before, and is an intensely political and intellectual book.

It’s also a book where the protagonists take no action at all, and which is openly and defiantly anti-violence, anti-war, and pro-religion. It contains no sex, no typical action ‘shoot-em-up’ scenes or sequences, and generally doesn’t have a plot that can be easily summarized. It requires a familiarity with various world cultures, religions, history and mythology, and is filled with inherent (and deliberate) contradictions and eccentricities.

In short, it’s a book that defies categorization. Which is probably why it will never be published outside India, because foreign publishers require a label, and The Ganesa Palindrome (which is what I’m calling it now, not ‘Iron Gods’) defies categorization, labels, and easy slotting.

So be it.

And because the sharing experiment went off so well, I’m going to serialize another complete novel next month.

As of now, I’m planning to share with you the complete manuscript of the first Vortal book. That may change, but whether it’s the Vortal book or another, you can count on reading an entire book by me online, totally free of cost, with no obligation whatsoever.

I’ll post info about the location, password, etc, in a few days. Meanwhile, keep in touch with ashokbanker.com and keep checking from time to time.

PS: I am deliberately not updating this blog as often as before, because I know most of you who visit here are already kept busy reading the excerpts. But there will be occasional updates and ramblings, like this one, of course, and important announcements, so do keep visiting at least a few times a week if possible. Thanks again for your interest in my work.