Video games, talking foxes, and a supernatural event very few people can remember. In Dan Hanks’s Swashbuckers, divorced father Cisco Collins’ returns to his hometown of Dark Peak, with his 8 year old son George. He’s sort of infamous in the town for his association with a gas leak explosion thirty years prior to the start of the novel. Cisco begins to recall that there was no gas explosion, he and his friends banded together to put a stop to the supernatural nastiness led by a pirate ghost by the name of Deadman’s Grin. Once he’s back of Dark Peak, much to the confusion his 8-year old son George, Cisco realizes strange things are happening once again. In Dark Peak, Cisco’s memories begin to return, especially when strange things begin to occur once again. Hanks mashes up science fiction and fantasy elements, spiced up with ample genre/geeky culture references.
⁹
When Cisco Collins returns to his home town thirty years after saving it from being swallowed by a hell mouth opened by an ancient pirate ghost, he realises that being a childhood hero isn’t like it was in the movies. Especially when nobody remembers the heroic bits—even the friends who once fought alongside him.
Struggling with single parenting and treated as a bit of a joke, Cisco isn’t really in the Christmas spirit like everyone else. A fact that’s made worse by the tendrils of the pirate’s powers creeping back into our world and people beginning to die in bizarre ways.
With the help of a talking fox, an enchanted forest, a long-lost friend haunting his dreams, and some 80s video game consoles turned into weapons, Cisco must now convince his friends to once again help him save the day. Yet they quickly discover that being a ghostbusting hero is so much easier when you don’t have school runs, parent evenings, and nativity plays to attend. And even in the middle of a supernatural battle, you always need to bring snacks and wipes…
One of the storytelling tropes I’m fond of is “getting the band back together.” After the heroes have defeated the villain(s), they go their separate ways. But something calls them back together. In the case of Swashbucklers, Cisco’s return to Dark Peak gets his old friends Jake, Doc, and Michelle talking, asking why he returned. Their memories begin to return to them and they suspect the old pirate ghost Deadman’s Grin may not have been fully vanquished.
A lot can happen in three decades, not the least of which is that people age and aren’t as carefree as they were in their youth. They ache, they mature, they have lives that don’t exactly allow them to run off and fight a Big Evil. Whether those changes are children, marriage, or supposedly moving on from their past hobbies, those complications build up quite a bit of tension for all of the characters, especially given they haven’t seen each other in years.
Hanks drew me in with Cisco and the trope I mentioned above quite strongly. He establishes a great vibe and relationship with Cisco and his friends. Complicated relationships, sure. But believable, yes. Hanks has said that a good chunk of this book is about parenthood and some of the more palpable dramatic tension and struggle for Cisco was being torn between his responsibility as George’s father and what he sees as a responsibility for finishing something he thought he finished thirty years ago.
While the characters drew me in, I found less of a connection to other elements of the plot. The novel felt a little looser in the middle parts compared to how tightly the beginning of the novel was constructed. I also didn’t feel too strong of a motivation for Deadman’s Grin and why these characters had to be the ones to bring him down in the past and now. Deadman’s Grin seemed almost an afterthought.
With a lot of pop culture references to video games, fantasy and science fiction books, and movies, there’s a bit of a comforting backdrop. The high-concept shorthand I’ve seen is that what if the Stranger Things grew up and had to battle evil again? That’s apt, but the strongest resonance I felt was with a TV show from a few years back, Channel Zero: Candle Cove. That show is firmly a horror story, but in it, a character returns home after a long absence, the only one with memories of something dark and fantastical, a creepy pirate themed puppet kids show. Hanks does more than that with Swashbucklers.
The characters are the heart of Swashbucklers and the novel feels very much like the start of a larger story. It isn’t explicitly indicated that this is a series, but the conclusion and thin details around some of the supernatural elements leads me to believe that Hanks has more to tell about Cisco and Deadman’s Grin. I’m more than curious enough about what Hanks has done in this book to see what is next.
© 2021 Rob H. Bedford
Angry Robot Books | November 2021
Trade Paperback | 400 Pages
Excerpt: https://www.tor.com/2021/03/22/cover-reveals-excerpts-swashbucklers-by-dan-hanks/
http://www.danhanks.com
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Angry Robot Books
