The Old Gods Waken. Manly Wade Wellman. 1979.
Horror. Dark fantasy. Appalachian fiction. Occult adventure. This is the first book in the Silver John series.
A wandering balladeer (Silver John) and a Native American medicine man must stop two transplanted English Druids from awakening ancient blood spirits and performing a human sacrifice on an Appalachian mountain.
The story is told in third-person-limited from Silver John’s point of view. The prose carries a distinct regional American folk-ballad cadence that matches Silver John’s humble, observant, and resilient personality, giving the story a folksy, benign redneck kind of vibe.
Layered on top of this is an occult adventure with elements of horror when it is determined that the Druids are planning to use human sacrifice to open a portal and summon primordial, malevolent forces to the mountain.
This is genre fantasy through and through. I see no literary aspirations whatsoever. As far as I can tell, there isn’t so much as a B-plot. Nor do I see any evidence of a theme. Wellman wants his readers to have some fun.
AUTHORS – I write short book reviews that focus on voice and vibe. They are useful to querying authors searching for comp titles. There are more like this on my website.