A review by sisteray
The Old Gods Waken by Manly Wade Wellman

4.0

Fun little romp. Remarkably innocent feeling for a horror adventure story. While I came for the action, the book actually is better at building the mythos of the novel. I love how it explored the history of the mysticism involved. It was nice to see how it drew from both Appalachian folklore and tied it into old world cultures. The dialect was great. It captured the feeling of life in the hills. I'm sure that some the the colloquialisms were likely hooey but I felt it worked well.

The ending does drag a bit as our heroes have to face 7 challenges. It deflates the suspense when everything is spelled out for you (and you know that they won't fail). What's funny is that even the narrator talks about how tired he is of describing the trials. Clearly Wellman was more used to writing short stories at this point and padded the ending a bit. That said, those bits were fun, but after a while they many didn't feel like they added anything.

I'm looking forward to reading Wellman's short fiction.