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John the Balladeer by Manly Wade Wellman

John the Balladeer by Manly Wade Wellman

A With Both Hands Mini-review Silver John, or John the Balladeer, is Manly Wade Wellman's Southern folk hero. John tramps the ridges and hollows of Appalachia, bringing song and the Gospel wherever he goes. John is a poor and humble man. He places his trust in the Lord,

WBH Weekly Digest 2023-12-22: All Westerns are Fairy Stories

WBH Weekly Digest 2023-12-22: All Westerns are Fairy Stories

My theme this week is around the true value of the romance. This Twitter thread lays out the mythic reasons why Jack Reacher and Conan are the same character. The mythic resonance goes far beyond their giant, hulking portrayal, as David Carradine's Kung Fu is another representation of

Chesterton: Introduction to the Book of Job

Chesterton: Introduction to the Book of Job

A perhaps unexpected source of my style of book criticism, and how I understand popular adventure stories, can be found in G. K. Chesterton's essay "Introduction to the Book of Job". This is an explicitly theological investigation of one of the most mysterious and allusive books

The Turquoise Serpent

The Turquoise Serpent

Alexander Palacio's The Turquoise Serpent is R. E. Howard's Conan transposed into a demon-haunted pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and it is awesome. I imagine a certain fraction of my audience will know exactly what that means without elaboration, but for the rest of you let's dive

The state of the short genre fiction market

Via friends of the blog Cirsova and SFFaudio, a historical point of reference for the short fiction market, another piece of the puzzle of why the book market is what it is right now. Weird Tales was usually a monthly, and if we adjust for population growth, 50k a month

Nightland Racer

Nightland Racer is Fenton Wood’s completely gonzo fable about a down on his luck former bootlegger who drives a nuclear-powered truck into the future to battle a malevolent black hole. The past, the present, and the future meet in a world where myths are truer than truth, and the

Lead the Way: Forgotten Ruin Book 6

Lead the Way is the sixth book in the Forgotten Ruin series, and it hits all the right notes that make this series my current favorite. I was tempted to say this might be the best entry in the series yet, but it is really hard to top the wild