Welcome to the Deadlands, where steely-eyed gunfighters rub shoulders with mad scientists and dark, unnatural forces. Where the Great Quake of 1868 has shattered California into a labyrinth of sea-flooded caverns . . . and a mysterious substance called “ghost rock” fuels exotic steampunk inventions as well as plenty of bloodshed and flying bullets.

Reading that blurb honestly turned me off from this book at first, while there were elements I liked — steampunk, alchemy, alternate history — it also featured things that made me cringe; multiple genre mashings, based on an RPG, plotonium, and zombies (which I think have oversaturated the market).

Boy was I glad to be wrong. Genre mashing can be done poorly, but Maberry did a great job of it here. I’m not much of a western fan; growing up in Arizona, it saturated most of my early life, so it takes something special to draw me back in.

The setting for this game is what remains of a Wild West California after a much worse version of the great quake of 1868. The Earth’s crust has been split open to reveal massive caverns beneath that snake all about and are filled with the mysterious ‘ghost rock’ along with almost Lovecraftian monsters. This ghost rock is the plotonium that pushes things forward. In short supply, Ghost Rock is a power source for steampunk like technologies, so long as you don’t mind the screaming noise it emits when burned. The book embraces the steampunk elements with dirigibles and other steampunk tropes being commonplace. Of course, like any powerful MacGuffin, someone, in this case an alchemist, finds a way to turn the Ghost Rock into a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

The main character, Grey Torrance, is a weathered gunman, who reminded me a lot of the DC character Jonah Hex. When this man says that he is haunted by his past, he means it, with the ghosts of his previous kills out for revenge. His sidekick, Thomas Looks Away, is no Tonto. A Sioux, he is a scientist who received formal education, and apparently diction training in the UK. They are a bit of an odd couple as a result. Thomas also serves a bit as the info-dump character, providing explanations about the mines, ghost rocks, creatures, etc…

Now throw every trope and genre you can into the mix, it’s here in some form or another. It can be a bit overwhelming at times, but made for a fun pre-Halloween read. My oldest wants to read it after he finishes my old HP Lovecraft books. The book also features more than it’s share of violence, and might not be for the squeamish. If a movie is ever made of this, Rob Zombie will probably be involved, let’s put that out there.

The book’s RPG roots show in the beginning, but Maberry pushes past that in a hurry, otherwise I would have set the book aside. It started to read like an RPG play-through but became its own entity in a good way. There were also some repetitive phrases as the book went on, but nothing too cringeworthy.

I am not at all familiar with the RPG on which the book is based, but from the little research I did, it appears to be quite popular. This was something that made me nervous. I read several RPG based books when I was younger, and most just felt like someone writing down of their latest RPG adventures. Some did not, and these were my favorites; this book, thankfully, fits in the latter category. The way it reaches across multiple genres also makes it quite accessible for folks who might not otherwise enjoy it. Not sure if it got me more interested in the tabletop RPG or not, but I will test that on my oldest as he is starting to get into RPGs now.

Welcome to the Deadlands, where steely-eyed gunfighters rub shoulders with mad scientists and dark, unnatural forces. Where the Great Quake of 1868 has shattered California into a labyrinth of sea-flooded caverns . . . and a mysterious substance called “ghost rock” fuels exotic steampunk inventions as well as plenty of bloodshed and flying bullets.

In Ghostwalkers, a gun-for-hire, literally haunted by his bloody past, comes to the struggling town of Paradise Falls, where he becomes embroiled in a deadly conflict between the besieged community and a diabolically brilliant alchemist who is building terrible new weapons of mass destruction . . . and an army of the living dead!

Deadlands: Ghostwalkers by Jonathan Maberry
Series: Deadlands
Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: Tor Books (September 22, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0765375265
ISBN-13: 978-0765375261