Wolf in Shadow

Wolf in Shadow is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that is the future Earth. Civilization is in tatters. In no particular order the story has:

:: blood guzzling magical meteors which make the user evil,
:: cannibals that roam the lands,
:: an army of Satan-worshipping fanatics called The Hellborn who terrorise folk, and
:: the almost immortal Guardians exist with psychic powers.

In amongst all this is the main protagonist Jon Shannow, The Jerusalem Man. Jon is a wandering Old Testament quoting gun-slinger. He's searching for Jerusalem, believing it to be paradise and provide meaning to his life.

Shannow is a man who doesn't hesitate to use force to combat the dark forces of evil. He bring justice to brigands by blowing holes in them. During his quest he gets many, many opportunities to do this.

I'm a fan of David Gemmell's work. I've read several of his books and loved every one of them. He writes in an way that I find enjoyable. Wolf in Shadow reads like a Western, horror fantasy (if such a genre exists?) and had a characters that you care about. They're genuine and credible and the masses of action makes the pages fly by.

For a short book there's a hell of a lot happening but this isn't a bad thing. Gemmell writes in a lean way. Where other authors would use 1000 words Gemmell would use 100.

One criticism is that I'm also not a massive fan of books that rely on magical devices to overcome tricky parts of the plot. For example, here we have characters communicating with each other using magical means. They also teleport themselves. This detrimentally effects the tension. But saying that that this is still a brilliant book and I'm going to definitely read the other two books in the series.