(novel) Blade of the Avatar - where to buy?

Is the entire Blade of the Avatar in-game or just select chapters?

 

Welcome to the game

 

Blade of the Avatar is a serialized novel, written and released chapter by chapter during the first year of game development. The story was completed, and was made available to founders for digital download. That original draft will be made available in print for those founders who upgraded their pledge for that reward, at the end of this year. Yes, it's true that in deciding to publish Blade of the Avatar, they have agreed to expand the story and rename it Sword of Midras, and the new version is not part of the award for backers. I was saddened by this, because this new expanded story is based on the same story we were promised as backers.. and yet we would have to buy that separately. What this means, is that we thought we were getting a completed novel, but instead are getting a 'rough draft' and not the final, publishable copy of the story.

We were not told we would be getting a 'rough draft' version of a story that would be expanded into a publishable work.. We were not told we would be getting a 'publishable story' either. Which do you think we should have assumed based on this lack of information?

I'm most upset because I feel we weren't told what we were really getting. If I had known the pledge was for a printed version of a 'draft' copy of a book that would be edited, expanded and published.. I think many may have waited and/or pledged differently. At the least, if we had been told more accurately that it was only the draft we were getting, we would have at least been happy, knowing what it is we're pledging for, at which point learning about this new trilogy of books that we aren't receiving as our pledge reward wouldn't be coming as a surprise (slap in the face) for us.

Long story short, Blade of the Avatar isn't available for purchase. It's just an early draft of the final book that was made available to backers without telling them it was only a draft. The final book(s), starting with The Sword of Midras, are less expensive than the draft was, and becoming available on all the normal book-buying online stores. <grumble, grumble>

 

even the fact that the signed copies are cheap paperbacks (which cost a ton for us given the level we had to pledge at to get that) while the version sold to the public is a nice expanded hard cover.

What was it Garriott said about ensuring they look after those who pledged early to help the game get created?

 

Blade of the Avatar, (the Sword of Midras in its unabridged, more compact form), is still a respectably sized novel. A novella (short novel) is only 20k-50k words. BotA is over 76k words. I think BotA seems short because it's such a great read! For some perspective, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Sorcerer's Stone for us Americans), is 77k words. Plenty of great novels are 60k-80k... White Fang, Catcher in the Rye, to name a few. I mean no disrespect to Portalarium or Richard and Tracy's work on BotA. I just feel the lack of detailed information as to what we were receiving for that pledge, while it may protect Portalarium from lawsuits, feels misleading as a founding backer / pledging fan of this great project.

**edit** BotA is just over 71k. Doesn't affect this post's point, but I feel it needed clarification.

 

Maybe my German version of Word counts different, the final pledge version of BotA is counted here with 71676 words (218 pages), the German community localization counts 71121 words, but consumes 294 pages (saying the same with less, but longer words).
But 76k would either say you have a different edition or you counted different.
*Salute*
Olahorand

 

Hmm.. I copied it into word, then deleted all the page numbers and chapter titles, the epilogue and the table of contents.. and wound up with exactly 76,700. Which is 5,000 more words than yours (which is equivalent to about 1-2 chapters)! So I'm not sure what to say. Are you including the Prologue in your count?

 

We received a rare book that will not be made available anywhere except to backers.

Collectible!

I dont feel bad about this. It helped fund the game and that is a good thing.

 

Yes. I took the PDF version after it was released as final and converted it in Word 2013. So more complete was not possible.
I just downloaded the now high res version and opened it in Word 2013 again ... after conversion it showed now 71644 words (even a few less as before) in status bar. If Word does not remove or miss parts of the text and if other backers do not get different versions of BotA, I stay behind my word count. Maybe your method counts characters like asterisks or quotation marks as words?

 

It was clarified that we are getting the original Blade of the Avatar for our pledge reward (for higher tier Founders getting a signed, printed copy). It will also be paperback.

As a pledge reward, I don't mind paperback, though it does feel odd to print the old version that is not only missing content, but has typos and the old character names.

It is weird that they charged $45 for a printed version of Blade of the Avatar in the add-on store and everyone assumed with that price that it would be hardcover. $45 for a paperback is really expensive.

Backers are not getting any version of Sword of Midras for free. If you want the new version, you have to buy it.

 

Well, I manually deleted all the Astericks.. I'll check the quotation marks... yes! you're right. I guess there must be 5000 quote marks in the story. I'll try to verify that number, but I think you solved it! So ~71K is the accurate wordcount.
**edit** Yep, after deleting all the double and single quote marks, I reached just over 71K total. Darned WPS, why do you count quote marks as words? Thanks again.

 

I agree. They're delivering exactly what they promised they would.

 

please show me where they stated they would be providing an inferior version to what will be sold. Actually the opposite was promised, with Hickman stating that people would be able to vote and comment on the chapters as they were released changing them as they go so that the end result may be different from the individual chapters but that at the end we would get the whole thing.

The different name I actually like, if the books were the same (same content, same format, either paperback or hardcover) with a different name and different cover then I would think we were being well treated and getting something special. This though is just a big middle finger to those who helped make the book. Remember it was a stretch goal we actually had to pledge money to to even MAKE the book and then we are given a lesser product. Show me where THAT was promised

 

From another thread on the same subject... Which I thought we weren't supposed to do, @Berek

 

So when are we likely to receive the physical version of this book? I have brought the Sword of Midras but have been holding off reading it believing that I had to read the Blade of the Avatar first! but that would now seem to be wrong as the BotA is within the pages of tSoM, and while I think about it what was the $15 shipping I paid for as I always thought it was for the finished signed version of the BotA, after reading back through the pledge rewards I see that we will get other physical items, when are we likely to get them???????

 

Just go ahead a read the sword of midras. It is essentially the extended version of the blade of the avatar. They had to expand more episodes and change the name in order to get the novel published by this publisher.

At this point, blade of the avatar novel is more like a keep sake if you were to receive the physical copy.

 

Thank you for clearing that up for me Roycestein Kaelstrom

 

I still don't know what (and when) I will get when I pledged to receive to physical book...

 

You will receive a physical book... signed, if you pledged to that level... of Blade of the Avatar as already published and available for download on your Account page, at the bottom of the Special Rewards tab.

Just as promised.

I would imagine that these will be distributed with the other physical pledge rewards shortly before the official launch of the product.

 

Thanks for the clarification