Customer Reviews

Shadow Play

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Burton has an uncanny ability to combine all the elements of the genre you love - urban legends, the insidiously creepy, the twist ending, quiet cold calculating homicide, auto-animations and shadows - resulting in a real hair raiser. About as much fun as you could stand on a stormy night alone in your reading armchair. I was about two pages into this book when the gooseflesh started to rise. From a free toy in a cereal box that preternaturally makes your parents do what you want to an Alzheimer patient's gruesome confession. From the urbanite who takes the ruckus raised by a wife-beating neighbor into his own hands to the traveling salesman whose secret to dealing with stress makes headlines in every city he visits... Burton had my absolute attention. I hope another collection from this fine suspense writer is on its way. Congratulations to him, and to Pocol Press for finding this intense talent.

You should be warned that you most likely don't want to show up at Burton's door to do any trick or treating. I suspect there's a good chance he would leave something nasty in your bag. His stories are like that too.

JB Burton's collection of stories roughly falls into the category of horror/fantasy. It is a collection packed with well written stories of an often disturbing nature. The book contains a wide range of stories from the title story "Shadow Play" that involves a little boy with a most unusual talent to my personal favorite, "The Acceptance" where the main character struggles to determine what his true, bizarre identity actually is.

One more stand out story is "The Forever Stone." I won't give away the ending but I guess this might be what passes for a love story in Burton's twisted world.

If you're looking for an entertaining beach read that you can pick up, put down and pick up again or something to read by a cozy fire on a rainy day, this might be the book for you. I would suggest that you might not want to read it before bedtime though. The stories are sure to haunt your dreams and lead to a most troubled and unrestful sleep.

I really like the twenty stories that make up Shadow Play. When you walk into one of Burton's worlds, you never know whose mind you'll be inhabiting for the next few pages. It could be an enraged father with nothing left to lose, or a child who knows that only he can save the world. It could be someone connecting the dots as the shape of a grisly truth emerges. It could even be a disembodied mind. Sometimes, as in the title story (which is reminiscent of Stephen King at his long-lost best), supernatural elements figure in. Sometimes it's just an average Joe who's not gonna take it anymore. All you know for sure is that something sinister, or macabre-or just plain creepy-is afoot...and that you get to go along for the ride. The narrator of "Per Diem", one of my favorites in the collection, asserts that "everyone needs a release valve." I think we should be thankful that Burton's release valve is writing.