When Living Shadows arrived on my reading stack, I was, to say the least, thrilled. As much as I enjoy John Shirley's novels (check out our review for Cellars), I enjoy his short fiction even more. That said, the book's subtitle of "Stories: New and Preowned" did make me hesitate.  A quick check of the table of contents showed several reprints, which is wonderful news for the Shirley initiate, but not so much for the long time fan; these are all fine stories, make no mistake, but how many copies of "Jody and Annie on TV" do I really need? However much I believe otherwise, not everyone has a voluminous John Shirley collection (a shame, really). Are there enough quality, new stories to make the book worthwhile? Why yes, yes there are. Seven of these twenty stories have as yet been uncollected (appeared in rather recent publications) and one of them -- a white knuckler called "The Sewing Room" -- is original to this book.

In some ways, this book can be considered along the lines of a greatest hits album. It's got plenty of classics, some pieces that have found more recent "air time", and a dynamite new single.

Of those seven newer selections, we've got some doozies of story. From a dark satiric jab at Hollywood ("Seven Knives"), to an all out assault on the Lovecraftian Mythos ("Buried in the Sky"), to a near future emotional apocalypse ("Isolation Point, California"), to the dysfunctional familial backdrop for a suspected suburban psychopath ("The Sewing Room") these stories run the gamut of dark lit.

From these blurbage summations, we find one of Shirley's best qualities as a writer: he's not content to dip his writer's tool (not much of a pen, anymore, is it?) in a single genre. In Shirley's fiction, it's not surprising to find ingredients such as crime, human evil, supernatural horror, sf, the fantastique, satire, philosophy, or that above mentioned shot of the Lovecraftiana dumped into the genre blender and pureed. This concoction can then be mainlined by eager readers, where it will promptly explode genre conventions and clichés.

Here, darkness dwells in many locales: from the mean streets of the inner city to the apparently quieter suburbs, from the glistening halls of a high rise mall/apartment complex to a nineteenth century town... There's a little something for everyone and quite a bit for discerning readers.

As with the author's previous collections (Darkness Divided and Black Butterflies), the book is divided into two sections. The first of these, "A Few Blocks Down, Around the Corner", is reserved for the stories that could be happening right now, while the second, "Through a Laser-Scanner Darkly", contains the stories with stronger sf/supernatural/bizzare elements. Of course all of these tales fall under and contributes to the overall theme encapsulated in the book's title, Living Shadows.

New readers to Shirley's work will find this a fantastic starting point. However, be warned: a collection like Living Shadows is a gateway drug. Do not be surprised if you find yourself jonesing for more Shirley fiction after your first taste. For longtime readers... Hell, you probably already own the book.  Right?

Living Shadows by John Shirley
351 Pages
Prime Books
Published May 2007

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