Helpful Score: 3
A novel of a different type for Straub. Two boys of different backgrounds go to prep school and bond together while strange tragedies unfold. They then spend a wierd summer together with one of their uncles who is a master magician. Full of wierd twists that leave you thinking about what this magician is really up too.
Helpful Score: 1
I find Peter Straub a very good writer but this book isn't for someone who is looking for an action-filled horror story. Straub takes his (necessary) time in creating believable characters and I found myself really caring about the 2 boys at the heart of the book. The plot has some great twists and turns. I found I couldn't put this book down!
Helpful Score: 1
By Peter Straub
First setting: an all-male prep school in Arizona, where two sensitive freshmen form a bond based on their interest in magic tricks. Second setting: the labyrinthine house of a weird magician uncle in New England, where the two boys spend a memorable summer being trained in the art of illusion. Or is it real magic? Third setting: an alternate world where dark forces are at play--forces that first show up at the school, but intensify their power the summer. Shadowland is a superb, under-recognized, early novel from a master of literary terror.
First setting: an all-male prep school in Arizona, where two sensitive freshmen form a bond based on their interest in magic tricks. Second setting: the labyrinthine house of a weird magician uncle in New England, where the two boys spend a memorable summer being trained in the art of illusion. Or is it real magic? Third setting: an alternate world where dark forces are at play--forces that first show up at the school, but intensify their power the summer. Shadowland is a superb, under-recognized, early novel from a master of literary terror.
Helpful Score: 1
This is a classic book by Straub, one of his best! The best parts of the book are the stories within the stories. I particularly love the times in the book when the "now" adults are reunited and the times spent at Carson. But the greatest parts are the fables told. Straub really flexes his creative muscle during these parts of the book.
I was very curious to how it really ends.
I was very curious to how it really ends.
Helpful Score: 1
This is one of the best stories of its type ever written. Ever! It has everything: innocence lost and regained, sort of. Mystery. Terror. Background stories almost better than the main plot. Best-friendship, love, betrayal, loss. Magic, fairy tales come to life, and dead things, too. An ending that breaks your heart, both because of the situation and because the damn book is ending!! I don't want to spoil the story by giving specifics, but if you like stories that stick with you for years after, read this book. IF you like re-reading good books and discovering something new about it each time, read this book. If you like sitting on the edge of your seat in suspense, read it. If you are not one of those people who carry their books around everywhere you go until it is finished, you will become one after starting Shadowland. Order today and enjoy!
A dark house in the Vermont woods, where two friends are spending a season of horror, apprenticed to a master magician. Only one of them will make it through.
A horror novel about two friends apprenticed to a master magician living in the deep woods and learning far more than they ever wanted to know.
Excellent. After a stint at a prep school that is haunted with tragedy and strange happenings, two boys spend a summer apprenticed to a mad magician. Ultimately, they have to face and fight him for their freedom, and their lives. Very suspenseful and captivating, like early Stephen King.
Like anything by Peter Straub, I couldn't stop reading even though the stories like a bad dream.
This book is creepy. A little slow at times.
I did not understand this book!! It was described as a horror story, as you'd expect from Peter Straub, but it was really just strange. I was left with a vague impression of the two boys who were the main characters and I never could understand the girl in Shadowland - was she even a real person or was she an apparition? There were a couple really scary scenes with The Collector but overall I've come to expect a lot more thrill from Straub than this book delivered. I barely finished it.
