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Southern Gods John Hornor Jacobs 9781597802857 Books

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Southern Gods John Hornor Jacobs 9781597802857 Books

Southern Gods by John Horner Jacobs

Southern Gods is the second book I’ve read written by the John Horner Jacobs, the first being Jacobs’ well-written alt-hist fantasy The Incorruptibles.

This book has a different setting than Incorruptibles. The setting of that fantasy novel was an alternate Roman Empire that has managed to survive into the 19th century with magic, elves and dwarves. The setting of Southern Gods is our timeline Arkansas circa the late 1940s. The feel of the book is the old antebellum South, still segregated, without air-conditioning, just a little slower and more backward than the rest of the country, and just a little bit of the genteel aristocracy still living in fancy houses in the hinterland.

The focal character of the book is Bull Ingram, recently released from the army after his stint in the south Pacific after World War II. Bull is a very large man and easily adept at violence, so he’s been working as a collector for people in Memphis who need that kind of thing done for them. As a change of pace, he’s given an assignment from one of his clients to look for a missing record company salesman who has been pitching records to black stations in Arkansas. He’s also given the task of seeing if he can’t locate the performer of some very weird music that comes out of Arkansas on pirate radio wave lengths. Along the way, he slowly turns up information about the singer – Honest John Hastur – whose songs seem to possess people. In addition, he is shadowed by something dark and comes to blows with zombies and meets Sarah, a lovely separated woman in a southern Gothic mansion and Franny, her daughter and a rogue Catholic priest with a weird theology. There is also a library in the old house that contains disturbing books, named the Opusculus Noctis and Quanoon al islam, that are filled with unreadable text and hideous images.

The story starts slow, but the intensity climbs until it reaches a fever point of horror. The characters are well-developed and the ending is surprising. The writing is well-crafted. For some the book may seem long, but the pay-off at the end is worth the reader's patience..


Tags : Southern Gods [John Hornor Jacobs] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <div><b>Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel</b></div><div><b></b></div><div></div> Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysterious blues man's dark,John Hornor Jacobs,Southern Gods,Night Shade,1597802859,Horror,Arkansas;Fiction.,Blues (Music),Blues musicians,Blues musicians;Fiction.,Horror fiction,Radio stations,Suspense fiction,Veterans;Fiction.,AMERICAN FIRST NOVELISTS,Arkansas,FICTION Fantasy Dark Fantasy,FICTION Fantasy Historical,FICTION Gothic,FICTION Horror,Fiction,Fiction - Horror,Fiction Fantasy General,Fiction-Horror,GENERAL,General Adult,Horror & ghost stories,Horror - General,United States,Veterans

Southern Gods John Hornor Jacobs 9781597802857 Books Reviews

It's 1951, in the Deep South. The Jim Crow South is still a festering swamp of racism. On the music front, Rhythm and Blues is slowly starting to break free of its minority origins, threatening to increase in popularity. Not yet -- it's still the music of African Americans, but the seething power of what would turn to rock and roll is a few short years away. There is other music being developed, too, besides rhythm and blues. Over in Arkansas, across the mighty Mississippi from Memphis, a mysterious, scratchy, wandering pirate radio station is broadcasting a different new sound from one Ramblin' John Hastur, music that is said to induce lust, violence, madness and worse in any who listen.

Wait, what?

Southern Gods is the debut novel from John Hornor Jacobs, a combination of music, Southern gothic and his own brand and spin on the Lovecraftian mythos. It's the story of a pair of characters, brought together to oppose an Elder God's plans to return. For when the music plays, and sacrifices are made, the stars indeed will be right...

`Bull' Ingram, a WWII veteran, has been asked by a Memphis record label mogul to find a missing salesman/promoter of his records. The trail leads out of Memphis and into the backwaters of Arkansas where Ingram soon discovers that dark forces are at play, including music that threatens the very sanity and soul of those who listen. In the meantime, Sarah Williams nee Rheinhart is taking her daughter away from a marriage gone sour, back to her ancestral estate of Gethsemane (and all things considered, an extremely potent and appropriate name it turns out to be). Back in the safety of her estate, even with an overbearing and dying mother, in the Southern Gothic tradition, Sarah accidentally starts to uncover some dark family secrets that have lain buried for a long time, and that the estate is not so safe as she might believe or hope. Circumstances draw Sarah and Bull together, as their problems and discoveries and challenges turn out not be so unrelated as one might think. For if they don't act against the forces of darkness, the stars will indeed soon be right.

There are a couple of strains to the writing of Southern Gods. When Jacobs focuses on Alice, the mood is southern Gothic, as if the reader has wandered into Faulkner territory. The book is replete with lush descriptions of life on a former plantation turned farm. Also, the characterization and personalities of the characters at Gethsemane continue that aesthetic. For most of Ingram's story, it feels a little more of a hard boiled feel, as if Sam Spade had wandered into a Mythos novel, and not unarmed, either. Ingram is a tough and sometimes unlikeable character that takes a while to warm up to. He's not a character you fall in love with easily, especially since he is very willing to get his hands dirty. But would I want him on my side in a rumble or the man I'd send into darkness and danger? You bet.

Although the author's main borrowings from the Mythos focus on Hastur, the King in Yellow and other stuff from Robert Chambers (rather than Lovecraft), the novel presents its own ideas on the Mythos. In a bit of exposition toward the end of the book we get a sense of the differences in Jacobs' brand of the Mythos from other ones I've seen. I have to say, his take on the Mythos is consistently logical and inspiring. His ideas are food for thought for one of my role playing games, and just in general. Heck, based on it, I think a collaboration between John Hornor Jacobs and James Enge would be a most interesting pairing.

I don't want to spoil the ending and the plot, but is there is pain, sacrifice, and darkness in the novel. It's not quite as nihilistic as most Mythos stories, but readers who pick up novels like Southern Gods are not looking for shiny happy settings and plots anyway, and shouldn't expect them. The last act of the book, though, did feel more than a little deus ex machina. Even though the characters themselves remark on a chain of coincidences, that chain does strain at credulity and plausibility. And, there is unfortunately a Chekov's gun that really doesn't fire off more than a wet firecracker, although I expected it to do so in a much more important and explosive way. This last act is the major shortcoming of the novel. That said, the book doesn't let up on the sensibilities and consequences of tangling with the forces being dealt with.

Jacobs has proved, if there is any doubt, that Cthulhu and the rest of the Mythos can thrive being transplanted to settings, eras and motifs beyond the usual suspects one finds in Mythos stories. I'm extremely curious and interested as to what else Jacobs will bring to the table next.
Southern Gods by John Horner Jacobs

Southern Gods is the second book I’ve read written by the John Horner Jacobs, the first being Jacobs’ well-written alt-hist fantasy The Incorruptibles.

This book has a different setting than Incorruptibles. The setting of that fantasy novel was an alternate Roman Empire that has managed to survive into the 19th century with magic, elves and dwarves. The setting of Southern Gods is our timeline Arkansas circa the late 1940s. The feel of the book is the old antebellum South, still segregated, without air-conditioning, just a little slower and more backward than the rest of the country, and just a little bit of the genteel aristocracy still living in fancy houses in the hinterland.

The focal character of the book is Bull Ingram, recently released from the army after his stint in the south Pacific after World War II. Bull is a very large man and easily adept at violence, so he’s been working as a collector for people in Memphis who need that kind of thing done for them. As a change of pace, he’s given an assignment from one of his clients to look for a missing record company salesman who has been pitching records to black stations in Arkansas. He’s also given the task of seeing if he can’t locate the performer of some very weird music that comes out of Arkansas on pirate radio wave lengths. Along the way, he slowly turns up information about the singer – Honest John Hastur – whose songs seem to possess people. In addition, he is shadowed by something dark and comes to blows with zombies and meets Sarah, a lovely separated woman in a southern Gothic mansion and Franny, her daughter and a rogue Catholic priest with a weird theology. There is also a library in the old house that contains disturbing books, named the Opusculus Noctis and Quanoon al islam, that are filled with unreadable text and hideous images.

The story starts slow, but the intensity climbs until it reaches a fever point of horror. The characters are well-developed and the ending is surprising. The writing is well-crafted. For some the book may seem long, but the pay-off at the end is worth the reader's patience..