It's my turn on the BlogTour Adonias Low by D A Watson.
About the Author
D.A. Watson is the author of four horror novels and the fiction and poetry collection, Tales of the What the Fuck.
His stories, verse and articles have appeared in several anthologies and collections and have won gongs and acclaim from Greenock to Dunedin, including nominations for a Pushcart Prize in the US and the UK People's Book Prize. An occasional poetry performer, he also appeared on the main stage of the Burnsfest Festival in 2018 as the warm up act for the one and only Chesney Hawkes, a personal milestone and career highlight.
He lives with his family on the west coast of Scotland and is still telling stories. Follow @davewatsonbooks on Twitter, on Facebook or visit dawatsonwriter.com
About the book
Murder. Robbery. Kidnapping. - Welcome to Napa Valley, California, 1891. - To lawmen and bad men alike, The Low Man is a ghost story. The most feared bounty hunter to ever walk the territories. Whispered to be a Native American shapeshifter, a renegade Pinkerton detective, or the Bible quoting son of a mad preacher. No one knows for sure. He’s a spectre outlaws scare each other with around campfires.
Adonias Low lives in the highlands of Napa Valley with his children, scratching a hard living as a farmer and occasional wagon guard. When a wealthy gin baron hires him to see a valuable shipment safely to San Francisco, the opportunity comes just in time to keep the family afloat.
But when the job turns into a massacre and his daughter is abducted by a deviant killer, Adonias is forced into a violent reckoning that will awaken a darkness he’s long tried to bury.
As the corpses mount up, a dying sheriff tries to make sense of the madness, scalp hunters saddle up and ride for blood, fame.
Review
It's as if someone took the energy and volatility of an urban crime setting, or a one-man Bronson Death Wish vibe, and pulled it back into a Western era, then wove folklore and horror into the fabric. You get the lawlessness, isolation, desperation of the era, and of course the brutality that went with it.
I liked the concept, perhaps because ultimately it comes down to the simple man protects family by any means possible, and that will attract a multitude of readers. I do think it can be done without gratuitous violence towards women and children, because it brings down the tone of the entire story, which is then detrimental to the cleverly interwoven subplot of man becomes legend. Legend becomes fused with folklore, fear and the elements we cannot begin to understand. And although it is part and parcel of said era I would also be cautious when to comes to the gratuitous use of descriptive language in regard to certain people referenced in the story.
Saying that, I can imagine this is definitely the right cup of tea for many readers. Justice, vengeance and guilt become intermingled, when punishing the bad puts you on an equal setting to those people. Where do you draw the line? Do you push before you're shoved, wait until it's too late and accept your fate or do you listen to the devil sitting firmly on your shoulder?
Buy Adonias Low at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher : Next Chapter; pub date 17 Nov. 2021. Buy at Amazon com.
