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Title: The Complete Hok the Mighty
Series: ———-
Authors: Manly Wade Wellman
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 265
Words: 99K
| Synopsis: |
Table of Contents
Novels
The Day of the Conquerors, Thrilling Wonder Stories, January 1940
Short Fiction
Battle in the Dawn, Amazing Stories, January 1939
Hok Goes to Atlantis, Amazing Stories, December 1939
Hok Draws the Bow, Amazing Stories, May 1940
Hok and the Gift of Heaven, Amazing Stories, March 1941
Hok Visits the Land of Legends, Fantastic Adventures, April 1942
The Love of Oloana, Pulse Pounding Adventure Stories #1, December 1986
Untitled Hok Fragment, Echoes of Valor II, August 1989
| My Thoughts: |
This review is Dedicated to Mrs Muggrage, because she’s the only person I know who is really interested in Neanderthals. And this book has a lot of them in it. That being said, Mrs M, I wouldn’t recommend this book to you at all.
The short and dirty is that this is a book of fictional pre-history and Hok the Mighty is a cromagnon man who does All the Things, Invents all the Things and Thinks All the Things. He invents the kiss, is the indirect cause of Atlantis being destroyed, invents the bow and arrow and fights pteradactyls while defending a tribe of Piltdown people. He also unites several tribes and drives out a tribe of Neanderthals who spend the rest of the book trying to take their area back.
So, the Piltdown tribe. If you didn’t know, the Piltdown Man was supposed to be evidence of the missing link (which have to exist if you think evolution is true) only it turned out to be a massive fraud and only survived scrutiny as long as it did because its adherents wanted it to be true. So having a story about a tribe of them just made me laugh my head off. Poor Wellman. Don’t believe everything scyenzetists tell you, you fool. They are people too and as such, just as scheming, corruptible and capable of lying as you are.
The neanderthals were presented much like how Crichton presented them in Eaters of the Dead, ie, brutish subhumans that were an evolutionary dead end branch on humanity’s tree. Bestial and degraded with just enough cunning to be dangerous. And that is why I don’t recommend this book to Mrs M. She can tell you all about how that portrayal is simply dead wrong on so many levels and from what I gather, evidence is pointing more and more to neanderthals being fully human and the differences no different than the differences between me and some guy from Africa.
So-so adventures that weren’t bad but didn’t age well because of the advance of knowledge. I would REALLY like to find the Silver John books by Wellman but as I noted in The Last Mammoth, they simply aren’t available at prices I can justify. Maybe some day when I’m rich I’ll track them down. But for now, I’m stuck with Hok the Mighty (and the Mighty Eyeroll of Bookstooge).
Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road 
Are these funny books?
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I am assuming you mean comics/graphic novels like Asterix? If that is what you mean, sadly the answer is no. Novellas and short stories.
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Sort of both. I was also wondering if they were humorous. The line about inadvertently sinking Atlantis sounds funny.
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No, they are not humorous either. It might have been easier to deal with if it had been
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How does her interest in Neanderthals manifest itself?
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She writes novels about them and posts about them quite often.
(edited to correct spelling)
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Actually, they have not appeared in any of my novels to date. Unless you buy the theory that Neanderthals are basically just Indo-Europeans. But yes, I am a Neanderthal advocate.
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Sorry about that.
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Oh, no hay problema. You couldn’t know, poor lamb.
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Sounds daft!
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Very 😦
Mr Wellman is not really impressing me so far….
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The land and people Time forgot books look way more better now😂
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Hahahahaha! WAY better….
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Oh, and here I was sure that Atlantis was destroyed because Skrat removed the acorn/plug from the floor of the city…. 😀
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Hahahaha. I like the Ice Age version better 😀
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The cover is attractive. I like pulp covers. But if this isn’t humorous, it sounds ludicrous. Like Piltman Forrest Gump.
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Turns out that “cover” is actually the magazine cover for Astounding or Amazing or one of the pulps. Somebody made it into a Hok cover since one of the stories was in that particular magazine.
But ludicrous is a good word for this
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I hope the tide is turning on the whole evolution theory. I’ve moved so far beyond it that I’m always surprised to find people still propagating it. It seems outdated. But if you’re an atheist and an evolutionary scientist to boot, what are you going to do? Admit your life’s work was based on a false foundation?
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In the circles I seem to inhabit, evolution is considered a fact of life
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Your circle needs to ask themselves if evolution is a fact, why is it still a theory and not a law? Actually people like that need to ask themselves a lot of questions…
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Am I coming across too strong? My husband is usually my gauge to let me know if I’m coming across as combative. He can’t proof every internet thing I say, however. 🙂
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You definitely make it sound like it is my fault that I move among people like that with words like “your circle”.
Most days it wouldn’t be an issue. But it’s been that kind of day 🙂
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Oh, man! That’s not what I meant at all. Sorry about that. I’m the last person to judge who we are friends with (or work with etc.). I have many friends who are not remotely Christian. I still love them and how can you be a witness if you hide in your homogenic enclave?
At least you can’t hear me. Josh says I tend to get louder as I get going until my voice is echoing against the walls.
I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog posts. The last thing I need to do is offend people whose reviews I respect.
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No worries. Like I said, it is more about it being that kind of day/week than actually anything you said 🙂
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Prayers for a better week and weekend!
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Oh gosh! I am blushing underneath my Neanderthal Halloween costume makeup!
It’s hilarious that the books include a tribe of Piltdowns, and that really says it all.
It sounds like Hok might be a version of Jean M. Auel’s Ayla, except chauvinist (I assume?) instead of feminist.
I read Eaters of the Dead and I actually enjoyed it for the cultural clash between the Arabic guy and the Vikings. The research about Viking burial practices, for example, I think was accurate. I wasn’t thrilled that Grendel and his mother were really just Neanderthals – and so was the “fire dragon” – but, it was basically reading someone’s theory, which I can handle.
I, of course, think Grendel was a T-rex or an allosaur or something in that family.
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Very chauvinist.
Glad you enjoyed EAters. I did not and I suspect I will only ever be reading Jurassic Park again from Crichton.
Now that is an interesting idea. I’m so used to reading stories that are completely fiction that I have to admit I never even give it thought that the old myths might not be just completely made up.
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I got that idea from a book called After the Flood, which is just doggoned fascinating. For more on this, see my post about dinosaurs. It’s pretty old, but you can find it through the tags.
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I don’t think I’ve ever read anything with Neanderthals and this one doesn’t sound like the right place to fix that hahaha
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Outside of Eaters of the Dead, me either.
And this is definitely not a book I recommend to anyone.
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