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Shadowland by Peter Straub
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Shadowland (original 1980; edition 1980)

by Peter Straub

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1,6362110,693 (3.67)74
You have been there... if you have ever been afraid.Come back. To a dark house deep in the Vermont woods, where two friends are spending a season of horror, apprenticed to a Master Magician.Learning secrets best left unlearned. Entering a world of incalculable evil more ancient than death itself. More terrifying. And more real.Only one of them will make it through.… (more)
Member:curiousjones
Title:Shadowland
Authors:Peter Straub
Info:New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, c1980.
Collections:Your library
Rating:***
Tags:horror, magic, fiction

Work Information

Shadowland by Peter Straub (Author) (1980)

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» See also 74 mentions

English (20)  Dutch (1)  All languages (21)
Showing 1-5 of 20 (next | show all)
Uncle Stevie lists this one in [Danse Macabre] as one of his favorites from the hey-day of horror. It' not very well-reviewed here on LibraryThing, which is somewhat understandable. The narrative alternates between deep character-driven storytelling and super-trippy, mind-warping stream of consciousness passages. These latter passages relate to the effects of magic committed by the evil doers in the story. On balance, the storytelling here wins out to keep the book readable. Would those mind-warping passages been just the tiniest bit more accessible, the book would have been perfect. But Staub is sometimes glamoured himself in the writing, diving too far into the possibilities to keep the reader on track. Ultimately, though, the story of one boy's introduction to deep magic and his friend's demise to the same dark arts makes for fascinating writing - a wonderful good vs. evil story, the lower case letters on those terms intentional to signal how individual choices and nobility make a difference in the world.

4 1/2 bones !!!!!
Highly recommended. ( )
  blackdogbooks | Oct 2, 2022 |
I finally finished this train wreck of a novel. Another one that I read when it first came out, but I definitely had better memories of this than what I just experienced. I kept waiting for it to get good. I kept waiting for something to happen. I kept waiting for old men to stop pontificating about their life histories...because, didn't I just read that in Ghost Story?

I must say, the first, non-Shadowland third wasn't horrible. Mostly pointless, and could have been done in more like fifty pages, but it wasn't horrible. But as soon as that blowhard Collins shows up? Yeah, the pace slows to a torturous crawl.

I think this was supposed to be Straub's The Shining but damn it fell flat. The biggest difference between King and Straub is that King gives you people you know. Your neighbour. The guy that works at the McDonalds, that kind of thing. Straub seems to try and do that, but his characters are rich and unrelateable. Where King will give you enough of the horror to make you want to run, Straub likes to have most of it occur off stage and have some boring old bastard tell you a story about it.

Anyway, like I said, the first third was okay. And in the following two thirds, there was the odd flash of brilliance (and it's the only reason for that second star)--because Straub actually can write when he's not so self-conscious of the words he's writing--and I found myself enjoying a scene or two. But then he just goes back to the boring crap and the old men and the stories and he just fills the back two-thirds with a heaping helping of I don't give a shit.

I'd had full intentions of reading Floating Dragon after this, but there's no way. Two books of his are enough. Thanks, Pete, I'd like to say it's been fun, but I can't.

I'm out. ( )
  TobinElliott | Sep 3, 2021 |
After a harrowing freshman year at a mediocre private school where supernatural forces appear to be on the verge of assuming total control, Tom Flanagan and Del Nightingale--two fifteen-year-old boys with a passion for stage magic--take a cross-country train trip to Shadowland, the home of Del's uncle Coleman Collins. Once a famous stage magician himself, the sinister Collins has plans for Tom. In true Straubian fashion, nothing is as it initially seems.

This was a tough book to read and it's a tough book to review; as the follow-up to Ghost Story, Peter Straub's masterpiece, it's bafflingly anemic. My least favorite Straub novel is A Dark Matter, which is peopled by insubstantial characters and ends with a whimper, but--paradoxically--it's a much easier read than this one. Though getting off to an eerily promising start, Shadowland loses focus when the setting shifts from the Arizona private school to Uncle Cole's house of horrors in Vermont. (And Collins is never quite fully realized as a character despite his obvious importance to the story; some of the school's faculty members, like football coach Chester Ridpath and unhinged headmaster Laker Broome, are much more vividly drawn.) The magical imagery feels labored, and unfortunately there's a glut of it. I enjoyed the first 140 pages, but struggled to finish Shadowland the first time and found it equally daunting when I revisited it in preparation for this review. I doubt that I'll ever read it again.

Two and a half stars. ( )
  Jonathan_M | Mar 29, 2021 |
I didn’t love this as much as I did the first time around, but it was still pretty damn good. ( )
  Charrlygirl | Mar 22, 2020 |
Ok ( )
  DianaFord | Jan 5, 2016 |
Showing 1-5 of 20 (next | show all)
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» Add other authors

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Straub, PeterAuthorprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Cooper, AlFish song quotedsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Gatti, DavidLetteringsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Guy, JoeFish song quotedsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Harris, Will J.Sweet Sue song quotedsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hollyn, LynnCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Lipińska, IrenaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Marhoffer, JohnPhotographersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Steimberg, AliciaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Williams, CeltyFish song quotedsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Young, VictorSweet Sue song quotedsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Epigraph
Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss. - Charles Dickens
The key to the treasure is the treasure. - John Barth
Dedication
For Benjamin Bitker Straub
First words
More than twenty years ago, an underrated Arizona schoolboy named Tom Flanagan was asked by another boy to spend the Christmas vacation with him at the house of his uncle.
Quotations
In eternity they were married.
"The secret is hate," Collins said mildly. "Rather, the secret lies in hating well."
They seized his arms and pulled them out, stretching them until his elbows threatened to turn inside out. Tom howled, "You can't! You can't!"
"That is your opinion," Collins said, and approached, one shining nail between thumb and forefinger, the mallet already lifted in his right hand.
"NOOO!" Tom bellowed. Pease flattened his fingers back, exposing the palm.
"The pain won't be as bad as you anticipate," Collins said, and pressed the point of the nail into Tom's left palm.
As in the classroom, he spoke with little preparation; ... But in the course of his ramble, something reminded him of dreams, and he said, "Gee, dreams can take you to funny places. Why, I remember dreaming last week that I had committed a terrible crime, and the police were looking for me and eventually I holed up in a kind of big warehouse or something, and suddenly I realized that I didn't have anywhere else to go, that was it, they were going to get me and I was going to spend the rest of my life in jail...Boys, that was a terrible feeling. Really terrible."
That afternoon a sheet of paper appeared on the notice board outside the library which read: Last week I dreamed that a fat bore from New Hampshire was beating me to death with a pillowcase. That was terrible. Really terrible.
Tom flopped in the chair, the chair where she had sat--and picked up his book. He willed himself into Nero Wolfe's round of the orchid room, the kitchen, and office, but read only ten pages before he gave up. That orderly, talkative adult world was not his. ... (Part III, THE GOOSE GIRL, chapter 10)
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Disambiguation notice
The official title of the 1981 edition (both dust jacket and title page) has "Shadow Land" as two words (capital "S"; capital "L"). For searching purposes, "Shadowland" is given here as an access option for the alternative title.
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You have been there... if you have ever been afraid.Come back. To a dark house deep in the Vermont woods, where two friends are spending a season of horror, apprenticed to a Master Magician.Learning secrets best left unlearned. Entering a world of incalculable evil more ancient than death itself. More terrifying. And more real.Only one of them will make it through.

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