The Hanging Stones (Silver John #4) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Hanging Stones
Series: Silver John #4
Author: Manly Wade Wellman
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Folk Fantasy
Pages: 178
Words: 56K
Publish: 1982

So, it might be hard to make out, but that cover shows John hiding on one of the capstones of the New Stonehenge while a werewolf carries a body over its shoulder.

The werewolves in this story are sad, pathetic creatures eking out a miserable existence. They are not alpha predators, they are scavengers of the lowest sort. I rather like that. Puts them into their proper place. The downside is that they aren’t much of a threat, except at the end where they come together in a massive group. While John and Co have to face them, it ends up being taken care of by a group of magically resurrected neanderthals. Yeah, it’s like that.

This was just as low key as the previous Silver John books and boy, it kind of grated. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed this but it was like eating rice with a couple of grains of sand mixed in. Irritating.

Still the best Wellman stories that I’ve read though. Understated folk fantasy, it just works.

And once again, the cover is probably the best part :-)

★★★☆☆

From the Publisher & Bookstooge

This Silver John adventure takes the honey-voiced folksinger to the site of a rising replica of Stonehenge, which selfish and ruthless millionaire Noel Kottler is building in Appalachia as a money-making tourist attraction. A pack of werewolves who live nearby spell trouble for his plan, though --- and even they may not turn out to be his worst problem. Eventually, a warlock raises a tribe of ghost made flesh neanderthals who destroy the werewolves and hang the millionaire on the Hanging Stones to prevent him desecrating what Stonehenge stood for.

The Lost and the Lurking (Silver John #3) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Lost and the Lurking
Series: Silver John #3
Author: Manly Wade Wellman
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Folk Fantasy
Pages: 178
Words: 56K

Silver John is tasked by the gubbamint to investigate a town. Turns out the entire town is in thrall to a witch woman and she has BIG plans.

John does his usual self-effacing thing, calls on demonic powers (but supposedly benign) and ends up letting a black preacher save the souls of Wolver when the witch woman accidentally kills herself.

Yeah, this story was about evil devouring itself. John does very little, just a nudge here and there. Exactly as in the previous two novels.

The only difference here is that Wellman lets his politics peek through for just a couple of sentences. I was disappointed in him for doing so because he hadn’t done so before. It felt very whiny.

I gave this the same rating as the previous Silver John stories because it was a template and just like the previous ones. As long as you can deal with that aspect of these stories, then you’ve nothing to fear from diving into this series.

I usually like to include the covers for these, but I simply couldn’t find one that was even halfway decent. The big ones were just smaller versions stretched out and pixelated OR they were pictures of an old paperback with all the attendant damage an old book cover has. That’s actually what I’m using here but with it being smaller it isn’t so noticeable.

★★★☆☆

From the Publisher and Bookstooge

Country folk, especially backcountry folk, are like to be a mite suspicious of strangers. But a plain man with a civil manner and no highfalutin airs can count on a neighborly reception from simple, decent people, so when the natives of Wolver looked to be fixing to whale on Silver John, he reckoned maybe it wasn't the sleepy little hamlet it seemed. But then, if it was, he had no business there anyhow.

The man who picked the guitar with the silver strings had seen some doings in this mountain country, and had a reputation with some almighty powerful souls, not all of them flesh and blood. So when the government got curious about the goings-on in Wolver, it wasn't so strange that they should have asked Silver John to see what he could see, nor at all peculiar that the wanderer had shouldered his pack and his guitar and hiked up the trace of a road to take a gander.

Wolver had a desolated look, from the smoking trash piles outside the town to the tumbledown ruined church. The children in the grimy yards stared at him dully, while their elders ignored him or watched him with undisguised hostility. John had no quarrel with them, but it sure looked like they were set on picking one with him.

With Tiphaine the witchwoman in talks with foreign agents to bring down the United States, John must call on all his arcane knowledge to not only save the deceived people of Wolver and his own life, but the American Way of Life itself.

After Dark (Silver John #2) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: After Dark
Series: Silver John #2
Author: Manly Wade Wellman
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Folk Fantasy
Pages: 170
Words: 55K

Yeah, these are definitely slooooooow and not very full. It’s like Wellman is writing the story at the pace of life in which John lives, ie, day to day with no thought for the morrow. The conflict is more mental with just a little bit of the Occultic (when a character calls on the 5 Kings of the Whatever, from some tome of lore, that is the very definition of Occultic) thrown in. John doesn’t have magic battles. He simply tries to counteract what his opponents are doing.

And that works, as long as you expect it and are not thinking of modern urban fantasy with faux gods throwing it down with the main character ala the Iron Druid, etc. The pacing is also slow in terms of time. This whole story takes place in just one or two days, just like in the previous book, The Old Gods Waken. So you get a lot of small detail that is easily glossed over in a bigger confrontation, but here, it completely sets the atmosphere.

Thinking about that, I’d say these are more “atmospheric’ than anything, including the threat of the Shonokin. John visits their village and the descriptions of their houses and dwellings, while not uber-creepy, just give off that vibe of something being slightly wrong, and when we find out there are no female Shonokin, that too adds a frisson of off’ness.

Another character of Wellman’s is mentioned, John Thunstone. He apparently had fought the Shonokin before and driven them out and Silver John wonders if these are the survivors. I bring this up because I’ve had a picture of John Thunstone on the blog before and it’s awesome. Once I’m done with Silver John, I plan on investigating Thunstone.

And of course, I’m going to include a full sized version of this cover. Whoever scanned it must have had a very yellow light or their scanning settings were off, but this was the clearest version I could find.

★★★☆☆

From Bookstooge

John attends a music festival, run by some odd looking characters. He wins the guitar contest and is asked by the shady characters if he’d continue performing for them. He declines and goes home with an old man and his daughter. He finds out that the shady characters are a race called the Shonokin who claim to have been in the United States before even the Indians. They are trying to return to power and need a gemstone of the old man’s to complete they mystic path of power.

They also need his daughter, as all Shonokin are male. The Shonokin try to drive the old man off of his property, but with John’s help they are rebuffed and their leader killed. This forces the rest of the Shonokin to flee the area, as they are deathly afraid of their dead. A witch who had been helping the Shonokin repents of her evil ways and the book ends with her beginning on her path of self-redemption by doing good deeds.

The Old Gods Waken (Silver John #1) 3Stars

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Old Gods Waken
Series: Silver John #1
Author: Manly Wade Wellman
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Paranormal Fantasy
Pages: 161
Words: 57K

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First off, I have no idea what genre to call this. I was going to go with “Folk Fantasy” because it really felt like the hillbilly cousin of Urban Fantasy, but this stuff by Wellman hit the scene long before UF was ever a thing. I was looking through my tags and saw “Paranormal”. That definitely fits, as we’re dealing with druids, blood demons, ancient indian spirits and mountains demons of the Appalachia. I tagged on “Fantasy” just to make it official. None of this magical realism garbage that authors today use as a crutch because they can’t tell a good story.

Very, very, very low key. John, who plays a guitar with silver strings (hence the series name of Silver John), hooks up with an indian chief/shaman and they attempt to take down the bad guys who are bringing the bad juju to the region. But there’s no wild spell battles or fights, just John and the shaman pushing on through the various barriers erected by the two druid brothers. It’s almost more of a catalog of what is useful against Magic X, Y or Z. Considering there is pagan druidism, indian mysticism and straight up devil black magic, there’s a lot of choices to use and to counter. The ending is pretty anti-climactic too. John furrows the ground with an iron plow and that brings lightning because of some old curse and voila, all the bad guys get crispy fried to nothingness. It is like watching two fighters who are locked down and can only fight each other with their fingers. Every move is small but significant.

I remember seeing some of these Silver John books in our library back in the early 90’s and they were iconic enough to stick in my head ever since. Never read them, but I saw them. Pictures have power. So I’m including the full size cover here for your viewing pleasure.

★★★☆☆

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From the Publisher

Synopsis – click to open

In the wilds of Southern Appalachia, lies Wolter Mountain—a sacred place for the Indians and for their predecessors. But the land atop the mountaintop, taken over by two Englishmen, Brummitt and Hooper Voth, is undergoing frightening changes.
Strange and evil rumblings begin to happen around the mountain—man-like creatures prowling around, mysterious voices reciting evil incantations that terrorize Luke and Creed Forshay who live at the foot of the mountain. Then a wandering minstrel, known only as John, learns that the Yoths are Old World druids who are hell-bent on reawakening the pre-Indian spirits that sleep at the summit of Wolter Mountain. Armed with his own arsenal of personal powers, John and an Indian medicine man must fight their way through the druids’ sorcerous defenses to rescue their friends from certain death at the hands of the blood sacrificing priests.