I Read Books: Wolf In Shadow

 

Wolf In Shadow

300 years after the fall Jon Shannow is a deadly gunslinger, the Jerusalem Man, seeking the city in the bible. He finds himself at the cabin of Donna Taybard, an ESPer, who knows that her husband has been killed by the local town leader, and wants to marry her. He drives off attackers, and with Donna and her son joins a wagon train looking for new lands.

Having found peace and happiness, the new farms are then threatened by the Hellborn, a new empire coming out of the ruins of the old world. They have magic, from the Sipstrassi stones, that they feed with blood. Jon is separated, injured, then nursed back to health by another survivor of the old world.

Thinking Shannow dead, Donna joins another man, becomes pregnant. This increases her powers. The leader of the Hellborn see her in visions, learns that her sacrifice will give him great power. Shannow travels on, learns secrets of the old world, the guardians of the ancient power. The land is the former ocane, the world having tipped over, and the ruins of Atlantis are here. They had mastery of the Sipstrassi stones, which was their doom.

On the one hand this is a post-apocalyptic western version of Gemmel’s regular heroic fantasy stories, with a siege, evil armies invading, a deadly warrior joined by odd companions and reluctantly meeting his fate. On the other Shannow’s wish to find peace while inevitably finding war, and the use of our world as the backdrop gives this a superior depth and texture.

Read This: Superb atmospheric post-apocalyptic fantasy western
Don’t Read This: Subtle as a brick