Ford, Sean – Shadow Hills

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Shadow Hills (you can buy the book through this link when it comes out in September 2023)

What’s that you say, Secret Acres? You have a sneak preview of a book coming out at SPX this year from the guy who made Only Skin, one of my favorite small press series of the last decade or so? Why yes, I am interested in reading it! Getting this book also made me realize that I probably never did read the ending for that series, since I got it issue by issue, but that’s a me problem. As for Shadow Hills, there’s a whole lot going on in this one, with a wide cast of characters. Things start off with a young boy walking through a wasteland, until finally passing out after he sees a nearby town. A young girl finds him and brings him home to help him, discovering that he can’t (or won’t) talk. We also learn her name, which is a clue I missed the first time around (even though it’s clearly meant to be obvious, making me a dummy), so keep an eye out. From there we jump to today (as “today” is usually defined in books), as a young woman named Anne goes through town and meets several of the residents. One other resident is missing, and towards the end of the first chapter we see her trying to make her way back to town as a mysterious black goo is enveloping her, seemingly from the inside out. From there the cops get involved, we meet several more townspeople, occasionally flash back again to Dana and the mysterious silent boy, and the menace of the goo steadily ramps up. That’s one thing that Sean has done spectacularly well here: the pacing. We get plenty of time with the town, seeing how it’s supposed to run in an average day, before things start spinning out of control. We learn about years old rivalries, best friends, what happens to Anne and her mother after her sister disappears as a child, along with the slow but steady drumbeat of a feeling that there’s just not going to be a way to solve this problem. Do they manage it? Well, the answer to that is a long time coming, and you’re not going to hear it from me. This book is a terrifying masterpiece, and yet another chance to wish that I had a pile of money that I could give to artists like Sean so they could spend as much time as they wanted making art like this. Or whatever they’d like, really, but you get my meaning. I don’t do ratings for my reviews, but this one gets my super duper fantabulous ranking, and you know what that means! …it means you should check it out when it comes out. Obviously! $23.95