James Swallow Books In Order

Publication Order of Sundowners Books

Publication Order of Deus Ex Books

Publication Order of Tannhäuser Books

Publication Order of Marc Dane Books

Publication Order of Star Trek: Discovery Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

James Swallow is a British scriptwriter and award winning author. He has been a Sunday Times and New York Times best seller and authored dozens of novels, tie ins, video games, audio dramas, and short fiction. He made his debut in fiction with the 2001 published title “Ghost Town” that was the first of “The Sundowners” series. Since then, he has gone on to write more than fifty titles in science fiction, steampunk, thriller and spy fiction genres. His works include the likes of “2000 AD”, “Stargate”, “24”, “Doctor Who”, “Warhammer 40, 000”, and “Star Trek”.

James Swallow got his start writing fiction with a series of four steampunk novels in the “Sundowners” series of novels. The series of novels were set in the Old West and were mainly targeted at a young adult demographic. Swallow believes that he was driven towards speculative fiction very early in his career due to his entertainment critic and journalist background. Since he was young, he had always loved writing science and fantasy fiction. A world where one could let their imagination loose and come up with unusual and strange ideas for events, worlds, and characters had always held a certain appeal. Speculative fiction made it easier to draw any kind of distorted mirror to the real world, making it easier to deal with thematic issues that may be controversial or unpalatable if written from real world perspectives. However, in the beginning few years of his career where he wrote the best part of thirty plus novels, genre tales and sci-fi was his cannon fodder. With his mother a techno thriller enthusiast it was not long before he would go on to write some of the biggest novels of the genre. After reading a badly written young adult novel, he always felt that he could do better, and the annoyance and energy of reading the novel soon led him to other more constructive pursuits.

Over the years, James Swallow has been active writing all manners of literary works. Some of the videos games he wrote including No Man’s Sky and the Deus Ex series inspired his later works. After writing for many years, Swallow felt the need to step out his comfort zone as an author. His time writing scripts for games that skirted on the edges of creative territory proved an excellent launching pad for his foray into sci-fi and speculative fiction. He had always enjoyed the high octane thrillers from the 80s with their excitement and all out action that seemed lacking in contemporary fiction. Swallow was interested in writing a risqué and ragged edge thriller series in the shadowy and fractious world of espionage in a post WikiLeaks, post Snowden, and post 9/11 perspective. However, his work hit a snag when publishers rejected his concept of Marc Dane. Having been very successful with sci-fi novels like Warhammer, Star Trek, and Doctor Who, they felt that was what he was great at. Never one to back down or water down his thesis by making the novel more fantastical or commercial, he was more determined to make his speculative fiction a success. The fact that many critics called the contemporary espionage thriller a relic only made him more determined to make the “Marc Dane” series a success.

Marc Dane the lead character of the “Marc Dane” series of novels by James Swallow is as much a frustrated man as his creator. Dane is an MI6 field agent facing challenging and new problems after being involved in a traumatizing terrorist event. He is a defiant man who is driven by the violent fate served to him by the terrorists that had made him lose his hand. He goes from office technician to full field agent as he goes onto the field to deal a death blow to the antagonists. Unlike your modern contemporary protagonist, he is not all guns and brawn type of agent, being something of a reaction to the never miss, super accomplished, fiercely competent types that are to be found in most thrillers. He is an everyday professional who does not depend on his fists or crack shooting skills but combines those with intelligence to make for a great agent. According to James Swallows, Marc is a reaction to the techie van guy always being seemingly inferior to the door kickers and trigger pullers. Marc can work a laptop and van like no one can, and will also kick down doors and shoot too if it comes to that.

“Nomad” the first novel of the series introduces Marc Dane, an MI6 field agent that is great with computers though he is always just a step away from the field. A brutal terrorist attack takes out his entire team leaving him as the sole survivor who knows that the MI6 has been infiltrated. He is now the only one that can go to the front-line to try to salvage what he can. The biggest snag is that most of the evidence suggests that the guilty party is Marc Dane. He is charged with being a spy against his country and working for the enemy and now has to work overtime to try to clear his name. He cannot trust anyone in the MI6 or anywhere in intelligence as he does not know the extent of the infiltration. The only people he can depend on are Lucy Keyes and the shadowy Rubicon Group. Lucy is an ex-military officer who knows what it feels like to be the rank outsider, skills that would prove invaluable to Marc’s assignment. With a deadlier and bigger terrorist attack imminent, only Marc and Lucy have the intelligence and wherewithal to stop the terrorists in their tracks.

“Exile” the sequel to the first novel of the series Nomad is an excellent write up that sees Dane leave the intelligence services and join a United Nations team on a nuclear waste investigation. Dane has received a lead about a rogue nuclear weapon and informs his superiors, but none seems to take him seriously. Given how well his partnership with the Rubicon Group had been in the previous novel he teams up with them again to track down the nuke before the terrorists can use it to cause Armageddon. It is a great novel with a throbbing plot similar to 24 the series. The action never lets up as Dane rushes from scene to scene, on the chase for the bad guys that he eventually finds and eliminates, saving his country and the world yet again.

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