Brian Moreland makes a flawed but nifty debut as a novelist with SHADOWS IN THE MIST. Part thriller, part horror, part fantasy and part military adventure, it owes a great debt to F. Paul Wilson’s THE KEEP with its main mix of WWII-era Nazis and supernatural.
Decades after his entire platoon was decimated under mysterious circumstances, Army veteran Jack Chambers entrusts his grandson Sean with delivering his war diary to his old general, now stationed in Germany. Doing so, Sean and the general realize just what was so damned important, as the diary details a fantastical tale of death and demonic forces – a tale verified in their search of an underground tomb where they unearth a Nazi relic.
These first 65 pages move at a remarkable speed, but that slows down a bit as the book then flashes back to Chambers’ Army outfit – where it stays for the remainder of the story, save about three pages. We meet the individual members of his platoon as they receive an assignment to infiltrate a Nazi fortress in the forest. In this dangerous feat, the GIs are joined by “X-2 commandos,” a unit of such highly trained supersoldiers that they go by animalistic codenames, i.e. “Wolf.”
What they find defies all natural laws, and the ice-cool cover image is the least of their problems. I won’t spoil the nature of their true foes. While SHADOWS doesn’t break new ground, at least the ground it treads is comforting for genre fans. Suffice to say, those who read anything with even a vague Freemasons/Kaballah/Knights Templar subplot will be satisfied (at least temporarily), as will those who are suckers for thrillers laden with supplementary maps, codes and other steeped-in-mystery images, all nicely designed.
At more than 400 pages, SHADOWS draws on longer than it should; there’s a large chunk in the middle where not much happens, and I would argue you could skip it and not miss out on anything. Some trimming would have turned the book into a sleek, well-oiled machine, rather than the in-good-shape-but-could-use-a-polish one it is now. (However, war buffs may find that stretch a lot to their liking.) Moreland makes a name for himself as someone to watch out for in tomorrow’s horror field, and while this may not be the spooky read of the Halloween season, it’s worth carving out a little time for. –Rod Lott
Buy it at Amazon.
Discuss it in our forums.
Related posts:
- Shadows in the Starlight
- Q&A with HERETIC’s Joseph Nassise
- BOOK WHORE >> 9.27.05
- Retro Pulp Tales
- Contents for ’05 HORROR: BEST OF revealed
