Shadow Man – L. Andrew Cooper

4 stars

Many years ago, Nick lost his best friend, Sheldon, to The Middle Reaches, and his friends all splintered apart. Now, after their high school reunion, the group comes together for one last trip into The Middle Reaches to get some answers about what happened to Sheldon. But it’s not as easy as it sounds, and something in The Middle Reaches yearns….

What a fascinating setting for a book! The Middle Reaches is a very Doctor Who-esque place out of time with its surroundings. It takes a bit of thinking to completely wrap your head around, but it’s so interesting that each person enters this in-between world and gets pulled entirely out of their timeline. All of the creatures were really unique also and made this book even more fun to read!

A certain scene with Celia was one of the best bits of body horror I’ve read! I was physically cringing while reading it, and I can just imagine the faces I was making throughout the whole thing! I also really got attached to Sheldon despite him not necessarily being a central character. He sounded like a really cool character, and I loved getting glimpses into who he was and how central he was to the main characters.

Now, I don’t know that the format worked as well for me. This story started as a Kindle Vella serial and is broken down into episodes. While a unique format, for sure, it led to some repetition of lines a character had said or a re-telling of the last thing that had happened at the end of the prior “episode.” This works when you’re watching a show with a week or so between episodes, but I don’t really need the reminder when I just read that scene or those lines. The constantly shifting POV changes also caught me off guard a bit and made it harder to relate to each character.

I also struggled a little bit with the humour. It felt like it was trying to be too funny in places, and the jokes didn’t always land with me like they should have. Parts were a little too self-aware (too fourth-wall breaky?); I came out of the story a little bit in those parts.

All that being said, the atmosphere and the buld in Shadow Man were gorgeous! I was flying through the book once the action picked up just to see what was going to happen, only to have a rather sad twist that left me gaping at the book in the end. I can’t wait to read the next one!