It is the year 1878, and in the heart of America’s untamed new frontier lurks a dark force as ancient as time, buried deep inside the earth, awaiting its return to power.
Evil men are exploiting the riches of the West in order to bring that awakening about, using strange machinery and fantastic devices to further their ends.
Only two men, warriors from two different cultures can stand together to defeat them and save the world from the terror of the Faceless.
The prophecy predicting the rebirth of age-old evil is close at hand. For Jonathan Fivehawk and Gabriel Tyler, time has almost run out.
The sinister Robur Drache’s insane plans have taken him into the wilderness, to an ancient battleground where warriors long dead begin to rise again.
BOOK FOUR IN THE SUNDOWNERS SERIES.
AUTHOR’S NOTES:
The fourth Sundowners novel brings Tyler and Fivehawk, the two leads, into a final confrontation with the villainous Drache and his master, the being known as The Faceless.
The setting for this titular showdown is a vast open prairie, where the dark influence of evil is creating an army of the living dead.
In this adventure, Tyler and Fivehawk team up with a group of soldiers on a mission to destroy the Faceless once and for all, with the future of the world hanging in the balance.
Spoiler Warning! The notes and annotations below give away key story points from Showdown.
* More fantasy casting; Captain Rufus Sandoval is played by actor Liam Neeson.
* The characters of Sandoval, Smythe and McNeil are named after characters from the TV shows Earth: Final Conflict and Good Vs. Evil.
* The term ‘hopperscare‘ is a real piece of period slang used to describe a grasshopper infestation, which was a major problem in some parts of the Old West. I’m not actually sure if locusts or grasshoppers can build a nest like the Tower in the book, but these are mutant versions of the real thing, so their behaviour is naturally weird…
* Yet more movie in-jokes; watch out for homages to Blade Runner and A Fistful of Dollars.
* There are two references to the TV series Space: Above And Beyond hidden in the text.
* Chapter titles: ‘Walking Shadows’ refers to the line from Hamlet “Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage…”, while ‘Shatterday’ comes from the name of an excellent story by author Harlan Ellison. The final chapter, ‘Sundown’, completes the trend of each Sundowners book ending with a reference to the sun.
* The ‘insect body’ form of The Faceless came from a suggestion by my friend and fellow author Peter J. Evans.
* As is traditional with all Westerns, Showdown ends with the heroes riding off into the sunset.
