Ghost Town

Sundowners #1

by James Swallow

It's the American West of the 1800's, and in the heart of America's untamed new frontier lurks an evil force, the Faceless, awaiting its return to power. Only two men, warriors from two different cultures, can stand together to defeat the evil. Gabriel Tyler, a reckless gunslinger, and a Native-American shaman, Jonathan Fivehawk, meet when Gabriel, injured during a gun battle, stumbles into Jonathan's camp one night. Initially suspicious of each other, Fivehawk dresses Gabriel's wounds with his medicines and they realise they are both headed in the same direction: Stonetree, once a thriving frontier town, now a ghost town

192 pages, Paperback

First published May 18, 2001

About the author

James Swallow is a New York Times, Sunday Times and Amazon #1 bestselling author and scriptwriter, a BAFTA nominee, a former journalist and the award-winning writer of over sixty-five books, along with scripts for video games, comics, radio and television.

DARK HORIZON, his latest stand-alone thriller, is out now from Mountain Leopard Press, and OUTLAW, the 6th action-packed Marc Dane novel, is published by Bonnier.

Along with the Marc Dane thrillers, his writing includes, the Sundowners steampunk Westerns and fiction from the worlds of Star Trek, Tom Clancy, 24, Warhammer 40000, Doctor Who, Deus Ex, Stargate, 2000AD and many more.

For information on new releases & more, sign up to the Readers’ Club here: www.bit.ly/JamesSwallow

Visit James's website at http://www.jswallow.com/ for more, including ROUGH AIR, a free eBook novella in the Marc Dane series.

You can also follow James on Bluesky at @jmswallow.bsky.social, Twitter at @jmswallow, Mastodon at @jmswallow@mstdn.social and jmswallow.tumblr.com at Tumblr.

Reviews

[Zachariah N. Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ghost Town, the first book in the Sundowners series by James Swallow, is a very well written, yet simple and to the point weird western. In terms of what a weird western story is, I find it to have all the right elements: shamanic religion, an indescribable and unseen evil, pistols that have infinite ammo, and to a lesser extent, zombies. Yet for all these additions, you don't get lost in the narrative and Swallow keeps the action tight and very well paced.

My reason for giving Ghost Town a 4 star rating as opposed to a 5 star rating is because I found the characters to be a little stock and lacking interesting personalities. I realize that in the western genre, there are only so many personalities to choose from based on that time era. You have your typical rogue gunslinger on the run from the law, you have your Native American who has goals to pursue that are all his own, you have your run-of-the-mill lackeys who work for the main antagonist, and you have the seductive sorceress that serves the antagonist but you get the feeling that she is hiding motives known only to her. While I'm not necessarily opposed to having stock characters, I at least want them to have some kind of physical or personality flaw that makes them stand out from the crowd. And I'm also not a fan of the dialogue spoken specifically by the Native American. It contains the typical sentences that speak of Great Spirits, ancestors, and having to look inside yourself for power. It just seemed really cliched and it kind of got boring to hear Fivehawk speak because you kind of got the feeling of what he was gonna say before he said it.

These flaws aside, I found Ghost Town to be a terrific read, and as reader and writer of the weird western genre, it's great and sets very good examples of how to spin an entertaining yarn.

[Cal Bowen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It feels like this is a smaller part of something bigger - which it is because it is book 1 but nothing is resolved and things are left too open - it is not a sequal as much as it is a novella - but because the print is large, and the scenes are so short and few, this feels like they took a novel and broke it into 4 parts to sell off for more money - not buying into it all - they got me once, but not for all four

[Sonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

We have a perfect mash up of suspense, scifi, and the Western genre/