Shadowland (1980)

Shadowland was one of the first horror books I read growing up (I think I may have been twelve at the time that I read it). Along with some of the early works of Stephen King, it was one of the big reasons I became addicted to the genre and later became a writer. Shadowland is a richly written, complex books that I quickly became engrossed in. Shadowland follows two friends Del and Tom in boarding school. Both boys are into magic and dabble at it while they are in school. After the school year is over, they spend the summer at Del's uncle's house. Uncle Collins is a crazed, retired magician who gives the boy's a tutorial in real magic. As the book evolves, it starts to become clear that Uncle Collins isn't all in the up and up, something that Tom begins to pick up on. He comes to the conclusion that if he and Del are to survive the summer at Shadowland, they are going to have to escape. The only problem is that Uncle Collins has taken a keen interest in Tom and isn't about to let him go.

Shadowland is one of those books that perfectly fits the description of "hard to put down". Straub does a brilliant job of making the characters come alive. I've read many of Peter Straub's novels and this is my favorite. He did an excellent job of weaving in sub-plots and creating a story world that was both highly entertaining and very rewarding to read through. A definite horror classic, I would strongly advise to pick up a copy if you haven't already read this one.
Carl Alves - author of Two For Eternity ( )

Read as a teen, this book was horrifying and had many layers to the story. I was glad to see that when reading it as an adult, the story held up.

The story begins at a fancy prep school. Del and Tom become friends quickly because they are both fascinated with magic. There are all kinds of things going on at the school - the students are having nightmares and other odd things are happening. Once school is over for the year, Tom accepts an invitation from Del to spend the summer holiday at Del's Uncle Collins' estate.

It turns out that Uncle Collins is a retired magician and plans on teaching them a lot over the holiday. Some of it is fun and some of it is terrifying. The problem is deciding which is real and which is not. Uncle Collins is also an alcoholic and half-crazy.

Some of the scenes are still disturbing to me, but nothing that shouldn't be read. There is a crucifixion scene that is very realistic and disturbing, but without it the book wouldn't be the same.

This is a great book as an introduction to what Peter Straub does. He is right up there with Stephen King - just as scary, using everyday objects and people, for the most part. Excellent Spring Break or Summer Break reading!! ( )

2011, Jan.: #2
Another book and another leftover from last year's reading. This time from a month of horror planned and just about ignored completely in October (I hardly got past King and Straub and mostly King's entirely mediocre and disappointing Talisman). As a big fan of Straub's Ghost Story, as well as his much more 'literary' (and some could say: sexy) aspirations and style of writing (that completely trump Stephen King's slapdash shenanigans; I'll just needlessly toss that in there, o yah!), this bastard was a big bore. A literal bore. Must mean something coming from a person whose use of 'boring' as an insult is so rare as to be nonexistent, partic. if we're dealing with beach reads that are meant to sweep me off my feet and keep me up all night like this here Shadowland. Ungh.

We don't need a drag-ass setup of 150 pages that leads to a zip-zip-zoom along a badly-paced, potential-oozing, completely nonsensical good v. evil plot, one of the most obvious and overblown I've read in a damn long time, which is a bummer, because I understand what Straub was half-heartedly going for here, a sort of riff off of John Barth's riff of of Joseph Campbell's riff off of Carl Jung, ancient mythology and human nature--just...you know, as mainstream 'horror'--and I like that dream; just a shame he couldn't reach it.

60%
[740] ( )

It is surprising how hard it can be to review a book whn you have been asked to do it. The problem is that someone is going to read it. so my appologies in advance if you don't like what I have written.
The books is based arround a central "library" arround which a numer of other lands are acessable. The main caracters are drawn from earth and one other world, The majority of these are young people though there are a couple of "adults", all charachers are humans.
this book is third in a series and it does show. the first couple of chapters are hard going as you have to catch up with the backstory, after this however i was able to get into the flow of the story. While I was aware that there was part of the past that I was missing it did not interfear with the enjoyment of the tale. The book cover does say that the books are best read in order but I was impressed by the ability of this book to manage to be a stand alone, much of this is due to the ability of the author to merge some of the back story into the current episode while managing not to retell the backstory. I still have a number of questions left as to what happened before but they did not interfear with the story line of this book, I will just have to get the previous books and read them to find out. However this episode although it started apparently from a good central point did not seem to have a satisfying ending. there was a feeling that the book had got too long so they had shunted chapters into the next book.
The style of writing was easy to read and the text was of a good size. This did not feel like a book written for children, more a book for a very easy read.
One of the sceen that will stay in my head from this book is where they are traveling through the library and seeing different areas and how they are treating the library. In my head I am trying to fit those that i know into the various cults. Am i a book worshiper or a woodcarver, perhaps someone else can tell me. The comment of the character can to taken at face value if you like.
I would reccomed this book for good reads in p3 to very poor readers in secondaries.

wow this book was so hard to follow and the charcters were crap! seriously i don;t even know how i finished this! its really bad. ( )