The Six-Gun Tarot [Dramatized Adaptation]

Golgotha, Book 1

By: R. S. Belcher

Narrated by: full cast, Dylan Lynch, Tim Getman, Jacob Yeh, Eric Messner, Scott McCormick, Evan Casey, Casie Platt, Laura C Harris, Terence Aselford, David Jourdan, Bradley Smith

Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

Nevada, 1869: Beyond the pitiless 40-Mile Desert lies Golgotha, a cattle town that hides more than its share of unnatural secrets. The sheriff bears the mark of the noose around his neck; some say he is a dead man whose time has not yet come. His half-human deputy is kin to coyotes. The mayor guards a hoard of mythical treasures. A banker's wife belongs to a secret order of assassins. And a shady saloon owner, whose fingers are in everyone's business, may know more about the town's true origins than he's letting on. 

A haven for the blessed and the damned, Golgotha has known many strange events, but nothing like the primordial darkness stirring in the abandoned silver mine overlooking the town. Bleeding midnight, an ancient evil is spilling into the world, and unless the sheriff and his posse can saddle up in time, Golgotha will have seen its last dawn…and so will all of Creation. 

R.S. Belcher's The Six-Gun Tarot is "an astonishing blend of first-rate steampunk fantasy and Western adventure." (Library Journal, starred review)

Performed by Dylan Lynch, Tim Getman, Jacob Yeh, Eric Messner, Scott McCormick, Evan Casey, Casie Platt, Laura C Harris, Terence Aselford, David Jourdan, Bradley Smith, Thomas Keegan, Colleen Delany, Rebecca Sheir, Steve Wannall, Andy Brownstein, Michael John Casey, Jonathan Feuer, Jeff Allin, Chris Davenport, Rose Elizabeth Supan, Jonathon Church, Dani Stoller, David Harris, Michael Glenn, Ren Kasey, J W Rone, Christopher Graybill, Nanette Savard, Christopher Scheeren, Matthew Bassett, Tim Pabon, Joe Brack, Ken Jackson, Tracy Olivera, Doug Brown, James Konicek, Steven Carpenter, Duane Beeman, Tony Nam, Lily Beacon, Richard Rohan, Sasha Olinick, David Coyne, Mort Shelby.

©2014 Rod Belcher (P)2015 Graphic Audio, LLC

Fantastic audio drama

SIX-GUN TAROT is a book that I wished I'd written, which is one of those praises that only writers get to throw out or would-be writers (or anybody) but it still has a lot of meaning. Basically, it has everything I love in a novel from the Wild West to monsters to antiheroes to the Cthulhu Mythos (but set up against supernaturals of Heaven and Hell). They even manage to put some nice social commentary in the book about race relations and homophobia.

The premise of the book is that a boy named Jim is attempting to cross the 40 Mile Desert a.k.a. Lahontan Valley, Nevada. It is a somewhat suicidal action for a boy with just a horse and no supplies but he manages to survive thanks to the efforts of Mutt, a Native American Deputy for the town of Golgotha. From there, he becomes embroiled in a billion-year-old conflict between God, the Devil, and a primordial evil drawing inspired from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft.

I like the town of Golgotha because it is basically a 19th century version of Sunnydale, California. There's angels, demons, mad scientists, evil cults, demigods, shapechangers, and a partridge in a pear tree. I'm very much of a fond of fantasy kitchen sink settings (thank you, TV tropes) and I suspect it may be do to the fact that I'm a huge superhero fiction fan. Golgotha is very deliberately ridiculously over the top and is all the more fun for it.

The book makes the wise decision of not focusing on any specific single character but making the book an ensemble piece. If you don't like one or two of the characters, you're bound to like others. The protagonists are also archetypal but fairly deep and the author is not afraid to give them flaws either. Sometimes flaws that make you believe they aren't good people at all. That doesn't make them boring, though, and that is a much better thing for a reader.

Mayor Pratt, for example, is a Mormon with supernatural responsibilities and the struggle of being a closeted gay man in the 19th century. However, Pratt is terrible to his youngest wife and also racist against Native Americans. Maud's grandmother was a protector of women and supernatural heroine but she also ended up a plantation owner, which makes a lot of her dialogue about freedom and justice ring hollow. The book doesn't revel in the racism and sexism of the period but it also acknowledges it exists and that is the best way to handle Western fiction in modern times.

The book perhaps takes on a little more than it can chew. Parts of the book deal with the War against the Dark at the beginning of the universe, the Fall of Lucifer, and other things that distract from the quirky little town that is the most interesting part of the book. While I appreciate the ambition, I tended to prefer the supernatural plots that were grounded in reality. Whether revenge murders, loveless marriages, racism, and mourning the loss of their recently departed spouse.

In conclusion, I think this was a very solid work and is probably my second or third favorite read of the year. It's a nice mixture of fantasy, horror, and the Wild West. The characters are fun and the world is set up for what I hope will be a fairly long series. I really enjoyed the narration, character acting, sound effects, and more. This is much better than the regular audiobook.

Not sure all the paths came together

“There was something … something moving silently through Golgotha like a poisonous rumor.”
Compared to this scripted audio format, I preferred the standard audiobook with a single narrator.
For me, this was best told as a slow burn horror story, building with a dry western narration and creepy, sinister undertones that seep under your skin. All those sound effects were just noise pollution, especially the annoying horse clopping.

However, the two dozen actors did help to differentiate the huge cast. But, that just brought home the fact there were a lot of different POVs with funky backstories that never quite gelled for me, as if the author never quite figured out which plot, magic systems, and genres he wanted to use … so he used them all. Steampunk, horror, angels and devils, East Asian mystics, Wiccan power … lots of bells and whistles when old fashioned western gothic would have worked just as well.

Quite possibly the best title on Audible!

My words fail to describe just how good this title is. The story is engaging, the actors performances are all of the highest quality and makes the characters really come alive and none of the sound effects feel silly or out of place.

This isn’t just an audiobook, this right here is an experience. An adventure. A journey. So take it from me, you do not want to miss this!

Yikes... Went from guns ablazing to feminist

I liked where it was going at the start, then we get introduced to some female characters. Yikes... I listened to the "I'm perfect at this and that, and don't care about my husband's opinions" which quickly went to "Poor me I'm a woman and can't do this and that because I'm not a man." Whaaa....??? Why would any male want to read this drivel? Do women like reading this kind of whining? Women don't typically want to be ship captains lol. I mean if you're a woman on a ship of men, good luck with that. Why did the author even put this character in the story? To virtue signal?

Fantastic.

I've been into the full cast presentations ever since you folks were gracious enough to introduce me to Locke and Key by my man Joe Hill. Then it was the beautiful Sandman series by the peerless Neil Gaiman, and the Swords Trilogy-Chronicles of Corum by Michael Moorcock, whose work I've loved since I was a kid. Now I get this awesome combination of the King Gunslinger series, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Unforgiven-style and H.P. Lovecraft. In a word, WOW. The vocal performances are spot-on, and every actor is perfect in their role. The effects are authentic and chilling, and I felt the town of Golgotha around me as a living entity full of disparate, unusual and fascinating characters on multiple sides of a killer narrative by R.S. Belcher. One of the greatest joys in my life is the discovery of a new favorite author. That happens to me a lot here...Grady Hendrix, Laird Barron, to name a few, and now sai Belcher joins the ka-tet. This one's a fun little ride across a wild weird Western landscape, and after listening to it for just under an hour, I bought extra credits to get the entire series of performances. It's that cool. Anyway, happy trails, and long days and pleasant nights. Highly recommended, fellow gunslingers.

Very good.

I enjoyed the story greatly. If you like the weird west this one is for you.

Best cast ever

This book was different from all othe Graphic audio it was great performances by all the characters just awesome

Great Performance. Ok Story

The performance was exceptional by the entire cast. I found the story a bit slow and cumbersome at times. If you like the weird west, there are better books out there like the Deadlands series but overall, a pretty solid listen.

Great Weird Western

I have never heard or read anything by R.S. Belcher before this. I loved it. I am a fan of Weird Westerns and this was great. I do enjoy full cast productions, specifically by Graphic Audio. This production was better than most. I will definitely stick with this to finish out the series. I'm glad I found this one.

Excellent Weird West

If you are looking for the last word in Weird West - you’ve found it.
Cowboys
Sheriff & deputies
Land owners
Silver mine
Strange cults
Arcane knowledge
Magical items
Old gods
And far more.

Add to this, a huge cast of characters. At first this can be a little difficult to follow, as there are so many names to remember, but the narrative handles it well and the characters are sufficiently well drawn to make them all distinctive.

The production is fantastic. Beside the narrator, there are around 20 voice actors and a folio artist, making this more like a radio play than a normal audio book.

Suffice to say, I had bought the second volume (Shotgun Arcana) before I had finished this one.

loved the merging of ideas, themes & overall performances. The colourful & imaginative prose.

occasionally the narrative & dialogue drifted towards cliche but very enjoyable & refreshingly dark in tone.

Full cast makes a stunning audiobook.

I am a bit stunned by this book. Graphic Audio put the whole thing into a true “movie in my mind”.

There are some dark parts which actually scared me.

The book itself is a very good story. Western/ Paranormal but so much more.

The full cast narration just blew it out of the water.