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dantastic's review
3.0
Silver John travels the Appalachian mountains, encountering all manner of strangness, with only his silver-stringed guitar for a companion...
I have a confession to make: I think 95% of fantasy stories are derivative and unoriginal. This collection is neither. Who Fears the Devil is the complete collection of Silver John short stories, 30 in number, ranging for three or four paragraphs to fifteen pages. Silver John is a wandering balladeer, modeled after a young Johnny Cash, who wanders from one strange event to the next.
The first thing I noticed about the stories were how skilled Manly Wade Wellman was at rendering Southern dialogue without making the speakers seem stupid. Once I dug in, the book was hard to set aside for too long and I'm not a big fan of short stories by any means.
The best way to describe the stories would be to call them American fantasy. The stories explore different aspects of Southern and mountain folklore, much having to do with witches, ghosts, demons, and other supernatural creatures. The line between fantasy and horror is blurred in some of them while others are pretty humorous. Silver John outwits supernatural beasties, encounters a giant, a house that's acutaly a living organism, and other things too odd to mention, all the while playing songs on his guitar and singing.
If you like fantasy that isn't derived from Tolkien, you could do a lot worse than spending a few evenings with Silver John.
I have a confession to make: I think 95% of fantasy stories are derivative and unoriginal. This collection is neither. Who Fears the Devil is the complete collection of Silver John short stories, 30 in number, ranging for three or four paragraphs to fifteen pages. Silver John is a wandering balladeer, modeled after a young Johnny Cash, who wanders from one strange event to the next.
The first thing I noticed about the stories were how skilled Manly Wade Wellman was at rendering Southern dialogue without making the speakers seem stupid. Once I dug in, the book was hard to set aside for too long and I'm not a big fan of short stories by any means.
The best way to describe the stories would be to call them American fantasy. The stories explore different aspects of Southern and mountain folklore, much having to do with witches, ghosts, demons, and other supernatural creatures. The line between fantasy and horror is blurred in some of them while others are pretty humorous. Silver John outwits supernatural beasties, encounters a giant, a house that's acutaly a living organism, and other things too odd to mention, all the while playing songs on his guitar and singing.
If you like fantasy that isn't derived from Tolkien, you could do a lot worse than spending a few evenings with Silver John.
bent's review
2.0
This is probably more 2.5 stars really, but that's not an option, so I rounded down considering how highly rated the book already is. I thought some of the stories were engaging enough, but there was a certain sameness after awhile. If there's an evil character, they are usually pretty obvious right off - if male, ugly, if female, slutty. Dressed like city folk, they are either vain, greedy or evil. Most women are blonde, especially the pure ones. And a pure heart always wins out over evil. Silver, a Christian hymn, the good book always drive off evil. Nothing bad, just a little repetitive. I do have to wonder if the novels that Wellman wrote featuring Silver John would be more interesting, since the format of the short story limits what he can do, but I don't know that I care enough to find out. I would recommend reading this until you start to tire of the formula, and then stop.
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