Deus Vult Wastelanders

Put your hands together for the latest exciting project from author Adam Smith, Deus Vult Wastelanders Book 1 – Gideon Ira: Knight of the Blood Cross.

Gideon Ira: Knight of the Blood Cross is the first novel in my new series of Christian Pulp stories, Deus Vult Wastelanders. The initial books follow Gideon Ira, a young knight in power armor as he traverses a post-apocalyptic wasteland America full of demons, necromancers, warlocks, vicious bandits, and savage warlords.

The Church has unified into one community of believers, though friendly denominational factions remain and support one another because this is not a time to be divided. Gideon Ira is Catholic himself while his best friend is a member of the Assemblies of God. Holy knights guard the huddled masses of survivors in the shelter of walled city-states. Mankind has largely forgotten the ability to forge advanced tech, so they preserve the existing power armor, plasma swords, and heavy weaponry like holy relics.

Gideon Ira: Knight of the Blood Cross opens with the wandering knight in desperate battle against a demon of pride. He’s tracked the hulking monster to its lair, and the audience gets to see a range of special abilities supplied by Gideon’s power armor. He takes the severed head back to the nearby border village where the hunt was commissioned and dumps it off at the local church for cataloging and disposal. When he hears the resurgent cult of Ba’al up north has laid waste to an entire village in order to harvest their children for living sacrifice, Gideon sets off on a journey across the wasteland.

The entire journey takes him to many locations: The ruins of a megacity populated by demons and cultists, the holy city of Belltower run by the Church, the demonic mirror world which lays beneath our own, cracked highways turned into gory battlefields, and across the flowering wasteland of a broken America. Several battles are gritty and brutal, real slugfests with huge swords and claws, while another adventure requires Gideon to work with a team of stealthy fellow knights operating with military precision as they seek to abduct the wicked Blackthorne. Gideon faces angels both fallen and faithful, articulate demons who seek to destroy his soul, and witches and warlocks commanding unholy powers.

The goal of this series is to create stories to inspire Christians with a new wave of heroic figures living out their faith in uncompromising ways. I’m studying the pulp writers who brought us Conan the Barbarian, Solomon Kane, Tarzan of the Apes, and John Carter of Mars, and my goal is to write blistering page-turners to keep Christian audiences begging for more.

Not so long ago, there was no such category as Christian Fiction, because most fiction written in the West was informed by a Christian worldview. Consider Solomon Kane, Puritan adventurer, whose creator wasn’t even a believer.

We’ve fallen quite far since the heady days of the pulps. Most stories marketed today as Christian fiction are by turns saccharine, twee, and insipid. All too often, they’re all three. Without fail, they preach only to the choir.

Adam has taken it upon himself to address the sorry state of Christian fiction by returning to the winning formula of writing a pulp adventure story undergirded by Christian morality and cosmology.

I’m especially pleased to announce that Knight of the Blood Cross will be my third editorial collaboration with Adam, alongside his prior two breakout adventures Making Peace and Maxwell Cain: Burrito Avenger.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s Adam again:

The rough draft of the story is already finished and currently stands at around 53,000 words prior to self editing and professional editing. My tendency as a writer is to increase the number of words during self editing because I leave description out of the rough draft, so that word count is likely to increase. The professional editor for this novel has worked on a wide range of novels and is already booked for August. He also holds a degree in theology, and I’ve got several members of multiple denominations ready to review the final copy and make sure it’s friendly for all Christian audiences.

Support a rising star author who’s already established a solid track record for pleasing readers. Help rescue Christian fiction from its literary ghetto. Back Gideon Ira: Knight of the Blood Cross now!