In a
world where people are suddenly losing their shadows, the lives of a group of
unrelated people are bound up in a hope for building a new world on the memory
of the old.
This
is an epic, apocalyptic quest along the lines of Stephen King’s THE STAND or
Robert McCammon’s SWAN SONG, with a large dose of INCEPTION thrown in. It’s
also a zombie story of sorts, particularly in scenes where the “shadowless”
surround those who are still tethered to their ‘dark twins.” The story unfolds
in a somewhat nonlinear fashion where events being recounted by various
characters overlap, but there’s a good mix of adventure and intimate contact.
The
unraveling of reality is incredibly visual, and no one will much quibble
with the premise that memories are stored in our shadows (and not in a certain
part of our brains). The writer tells the story from multiple points of view,
with both first and third person being used. The author does a very good job of
“opening out” the story with flashbacks to “before” and even to multiple events
after the Forgetting hits.
Peng Shepherd's debut novel is a multi-faceted apocalyptic quest story told from multiple points of view. She plays with pov in a way that I haven't seen since Kevin Brooks' iBoy, and it's astonishing that this is her first book.
