Wolf in Shadow

The story

Three centuries ago the world tipped on its axis, the seas rose and the old civilisation went under. What has grown back is a frontier of farming settlements, trading towns and brigand country, and Jon Shannow rides through it looking for Jerusalem. He is sure the city exists because his Bible says so, and the search is the one fixed point in a life otherwise spent killing outlaws. People call him the Jerusalem Man, some with respect and many in the belief that he is mad.

The novel opens with Shannow drifting into the life of Donna Taybard, whose husband has been murdered by the men who run the nearby town of Rivervale, and her young son Eric. When the wagonmaster Con Griffin comes through with a convoy of settlers bound for new land, Donna sells up and joins him. Shannow, against his usual habit of moving on as soon as the shooting stops, rides with them.

The danger to the new settlement comes out of the Plague Lands. The Hellborn are an army of devil-worshippers led by Abaddon, the Lord of the Pit, and they are better armed than anyone they meet. Their power comes from Sipstrassi, golden stones that can heal, feed and make almost anything their holder can imagine. A stone that is used up turns black. One that is recharged with blood turns red, loses its power to heal, and works on the mind of whoever carries it, and Abaddon's people have been feeding theirs. When the Hellborn take someone Shannow cares for as a sacrifice, a wandering vigilante's quarrel turns into a war.

Under the gunfights Gemmell lays some larger questions: what the Fall really was, what came before it, and how much of the scripture Shannow lives by might be garbled history. Those threads matter more in the two sequels, but they give this first book an odd, archaeological undertow that sets it apart from a plain western.

Reading notes

Wolf in Shadow was Gemmell's fourth novel and his first away from the Drenai. It is a western in everything but the calendar: pistols and horses, settlers and wagon trains, towns run by whoever has the most guns, and a lone rider who cleans them up and is then asked to leave. On top of that he builds a science-fantasy frame of a tilted earth, lost Atlantis and stones that answer to thought, and he gives the book a hero whose Christianity is sincere rather than decorative. The novel was written while his mother was dying of cancer, and he intended it to stand alone; its bleakness makes sense in that light.

Shannow is one of Gemmell's harder heroes to warm to. He is devout and haunted by what he has done, and he kills without hesitation, and the book is more interested in watching him than in excusing him. Not every critic accepted that. One hostile review, which said it dreaded to think of people who looked up to men like Shannow, stayed with Gemmell long enough that he answered it in the sequel.

The story is fast and uncomplicated, and the Fall is only sketched, which suits readers who want momentum more than worldbuilding. The enemy is drawn in broad strokes; the interest lies with Shannow and the people he rides beside. It was adapted as a graphic novel in 1994, scripted by Stan Nicholls with art by Fangorn. As a first Gemmell it works well for anyone who likes westerns, though readers who dislike overt religious content may find Shannow hard going.