I committed a horrendous mistake when I started with “Shadowland”. I read this one in the electronic format. I couldn’t get hold of a paperback in the book stores, and was too impatient to shop for it on the net. And the e-book completely messed up my experience of reading the book. It had a gazillion typos and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were missing chunks of paragraphs or pages. Boys and girls, therefore, go and buy that book or take it from the local library. A badly made e-book can really screw up best of a best-seller. This is ofcourse assuming that the book itself wouldn’t have any errors and the miserable pirate who circulated this e-book amongst free-loaders like myself is the culprit.
That aside, the book is extremely dark. Stephen King would have been proud of it. It is about a trip by young school boys to a magician’s palace. The school itself has witnessed some pretty unusual incidents. The unusual turns psychotic, and then transforms to nightmarish. The heroes of the book, Tom Flanagan and Del Nightingale, have only their friendship to fall back on. They share a common interest: magic. Tom, who thought himself to be pretty good with card tricks, was floored when he saw what Del could accomplish. And Del kept raving about the person who taught him all, his uncle Collins. So for a summer break, Tom decides to accompany Del to his uncle’s place. It is more than just enthusiasm to pull off some amateurish illusion tricks. It is answering to the call of the destiny which takes Tom to the place called “Shadowland”. And the horrors that await them there are beyond their wildest imagination… and the melodrama ends here.
The thing is, the “horrors” in the book are too subtle to begin with. Most of the book keeps building the whole thing up giving you a sense of impending doom. And the build up, atleast for me, was pretty mediocre.
Add to that, a pretty weak plot and it doesn’t make for a very great read. So in the end, it wasn’t a very satisfying read for me. Plus the structure of the whole book started with a first person narration and moved on to third person, with the story as narrated to the first person. Didn’t really get the logic of that. It could have been all third person to start with. Guess some of the tricks of the trade of authors will remain above my intellectual grasp.
As I said, the book keeps building up the plot. And the climax where it culminates, shows some promise. But when the climax climaxed, so to speak, I didn’t particularly relish it. The evil was destroyed too conveniently. Though it was fair, it wasn’t really satisfying.
All in all, I did not find it a very satisfying book. It just seems like the author just decided to write some horror on impulse, without a concrete story to build it on. Consequently, while the horror is quite good, the story is a bit too weak to enjoy.
That aside, the book is extremely dark. Stephen King would have been proud of it. It is about a trip by young school boys to a magician’s palace. The school itself has witnessed some pretty unusual incidents. The unusual turns psychotic, and then transforms to nightmarish. The heroes of the book, Tom Flanagan and Del Nightingale, have only their friendship to fall back on. They share a common interest: magic. Tom, who thought himself to be pretty good with card tricks, was floored when he saw what Del could accomplish. And Del kept raving about the person who taught him all, his uncle Collins. So for a summer break, Tom decides to accompany Del to his uncle’s place. It is more than just enthusiasm to pull off some amateurish illusion tricks. It is answering to the call of the destiny which takes Tom to the place called “Shadowland”. And the horrors that await them there are beyond their wildest imagination… and the melodrama ends here.
The thing is, the “horrors” in the book are too subtle to begin with. Most of the book keeps building the whole thing up giving you a sense of impending doom. And the build up, atleast for me, was pretty mediocre.
Add to that, a pretty weak plot and it doesn’t make for a very great read. So in the end, it wasn’t a very satisfying read for me. Plus the structure of the whole book started with a first person narration and moved on to third person, with the story as narrated to the first person. Didn’t really get the logic of that. It could have been all third person to start with. Guess some of the tricks of the trade of authors will remain above my intellectual grasp.
As I said, the book keeps building up the plot. And the climax where it culminates, shows some promise. But when the climax climaxed, so to speak, I didn’t particularly relish it. The evil was destroyed too conveniently. Though it was fair, it wasn’t really satisfying.
All in all, I did not find it a very satisfying book. It just seems like the author just decided to write some horror on impulse, without a concrete story to build it on. Consequently, while the horror is quite good, the story is a bit too weak to enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment