ONCE UPON A FANG IN THE WEST BY JOHN DOVER (BOOK REVIEW)

4/8/2021

The pitch for this novella sounds like the start of a joke: a cowboy, a vampire and a ghost walk into a bar...

The pitch for this novella sounds like the start of a joke: a cowboy, a vampire and a ghost walk into a bar...

This line should let you know what kind of a book you are in for. Dover has written a fast-paced, blood soaked western and filled it with vampires, ghosts and some kind of demon that likes to collect the teeth of its victims and make tea out them (the teeth that is, not the victims). On a superficial level this is all kinds of awesome and is a great premise for the book.

Dover gets us straight into the action with the opening chapters hurtling us through a bar fight, a death, a resurrection, a ghost and enough back story to fill another book. The pace doesn’t let up throughout, with short chapters (some frustratingly so) driving the story forward. I read the whole thing in three days, and this compulsion to keep reading is a strong positive.

Now, as a rule, I am not a fan of big books as they can be repetitive or too slow. This is a very short book, just a couple of hundred pages long, but it would have been absolutely amazing had it been longer.

For example, Samuel and Finn are two vampires with a massive history that is explained in a few pages. There is more than enough story there for a whole book which would have deepened their relationship and given more weight to the story. Similarly, William has a great past that is begging to be expanded: the former gunslinger, now drunk and living off the memory of those glory years. He’s also haunted by a kid he killed.

This is a recurring issue throughout the book: we are told things about these characters, rather than experiencing them. As a result, it is all tell, with very little show, and so it hard to feel any empathy or sympathy with the horrible things Dover unleashes on his cast.

The book reads like a pitch for a film (which would be awesome – a ghost, a vampire, a cowboy?? Come on, who doesn’t want to see that!), which is no bad thing. However, I was left wanting more.

So, to sum up, this is a decent if unfulfilling, read.

Once Upon a Fang in the West
by John Dover

The Braided Pony saloon is no stranger to gun fire and blood stains on the floor. But when a mysterious gunslinger turns up dead in Ruby’s room, it’s up to the town's drunken sheriff to investigate. Lucky for him, Samuel, a fast-talking vampire, arrives looking to settle a score and attempting to resurrect his dead friend. Now they’re on the hunt across the rocky plains of the Wild West to recover the life that was stolen.

My bio
David Watkins lives in Devon in the UK with his wife, two sons, dog, cat and two turtles. He is unsure of his place in the pecking order: probably somewhere between the cat and the turtles.

He has currently released three novels, (The Original’s Return, The Original’s Retribution and The Devil’s Inn) and has a short story in the werewolf anthology Leaders of The Pack. His most recent release is the short story Rhitta Gawr available as part of the Short Sharp Shocks! Series from Demain Publishing.

Website: www.david-watkins.com
Twitter: @joshfishkins
Amazon: author.to/DavidWatkins