Books: Swashbucklers By Dan Hanks (2021)

 

"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 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 schools 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"

Author Dan Hanks describes Swashbucklers as “Ghostbusters meets Goonies meets Stranger Things meets IT.” Indeed, this book plays homage to many things 80s, which often reminded me of Ready Player One –except less complex and smug. It plays out like a sequel to a previous novel, where the kids, now adults with lives, with their own children, and worries more grounded in reality than magic, must return back to their small town and confront the evil that they thought once stopped, only to discover the villain clings to the skin of the world –or worlds, as the idea of the multiverse is included here. It’s packed with a lot of charm, nostalgia, witty dialogue, and weird things. Dark Peak is right out of Stephen King’s Derry, a town that exists in ether, ignoring the dangers that surround them, and quietly passing them off as “gas leaks” or with other lies.

The book is fun, not necessarily too dark –most of it leans into the idea of adults (some who have never grown up) being too old to confront the magical evils of the world. The trope works here most of the time, but because Hanks is borrowing a lot from these 80s pop culture media and he’s having fun. The reader will have fun as well, even if they were not born or lived through the 1980s.

Hanks does one last 1980s homage here –the ending: a little Back to the Future and Quantum Leap, as someone “leaps” into their younger self and then goes off to right what once went wrong. I’m unsure if Hanks will write a sequel or just figured out a neat way to end the tale. It’s frustrating, if only because there is no real resolve, but also daring as well. I mean, not everything has to be a franchise.