The Poor Man's Magnificent Seven Heads Out West

The Outcasts Series

by Jason Elder

War Hatchet

Pistols and Powder
p. 2000

 

I decided to try my hand at a western series after finding a few of them on the discount rack of a used book booth at Gibraltar. After browsing for a minute or so I snagged the only two of what appeared to be a long running series, the Outcasts series, by Jason Elder, which is a damn fine western name if ever I heard one.

Upon further deliberation, I probably should have been a bit more scrutinizing.

What I thought were two random books in a lengthy series turned out to be books three and four... of a series that only lasted four books. I can’t find a whole lot of information about Jason Elder or the Outcasts series, so I have no idea why he quit after four books, but it probably wouldn’t be off base to assume there just wasn’t enough demand to continue.

I feel like Elder watched a lot of old westerns and movies to prep himself for writing this series, as it is chock full of cliches and offensive stereotypes. The plot is simple and easy to stretch out—you have a group of diverse characters thrown together by circumstances and they are traveling west in hopes of finding a better life in California. Here is a rundown of the Outcasts; we’ve got:

• Freed ex-slave
• Noble savage
• Kentucky-fried southern gentleman
• Disgraced ex-army man who can't quit thinking like a soldier and assumes unofficial leadership
• Drunken Irishman who likes to blow things up
• And... horny young idiot?

And those cliches are every bit as empty as you’d expect them to be. No one has a really dynamic personality and there isn’t enough time spent on any of them in the books I read, especially the so-called leader, who is a dud. After spending most of book 3 in a saloon, the horny young idiot gets particular focus in “Pistols and Powder,” but he’s like the poor man’s Joe Cartwright, without the sufficient wits, nobility or charm that character possessed.

Hilariously, Elder wrote several of his character’s dialects into the story. The ex-Confederate southern gentleman is full on Foghorn Leghorn, referring to himself with “Ah” instead of “I”, “Ah’ve instead of I’ve” and so forth. This dialogue quirk was distracting enough but it was nothing compared to the awful mess that was the freed slave’s dialogue. There was not a single line in which Elder hesitated to fuck up the black man’s speech, producing cringeworthy sentences like “Well, yo’ done found yoreself de right company... We am all orphans—in a manner of speaking.” I get the value of writing dialect, in theory, and I understand wanting to write ‘realistically’ but for fuck’s sake, these books were written in 2000.

In addition to this travesty of the written word, “War Hatchet” was the first book I read, and less than half of the book actually centered on the Outcasts, the rest being dedicated to an obnoxiously plucky orphaned boy and a trio of inept villains. Choosing to steer the focus away from your main characters in book 3 of a series was a mistake and possibly a damning one. “Pistols and Powder” brought the focus back to our main characters and offered a more balanced story, but it wasn’t enough.

The Outcasts series had the feel of an old-timey western television series, something that would have had a long run and better company back in the fifties and sixties, but seeing a series like this written near the end of the millennium seemed a bit outdated. Elder’s characters just aren’t interesting enough nor is his writing intriguing enough to snare readers so it’s not the least bit shocking that the series just ended without resolution. Did the Outcasts ever reach California? Did the southern gentleman open his own fried chicken restaurant chain? Did the drunken Irishman ever find a decent saloon? How many STDs did the young guy pick up along the way? Alas, these are questions which we shall never know the answers to.