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Spider World #6
Shadowland
In a bold effort to save his brother's life, Niall leaves the spider city and travels underground into Shadowland-the lair of the powerful Magician-who Niall must battle in a near superhuman contest of strength. Colin Wilson is the author of more than eighty books that include novels, psychology, and the paranormal.
367 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
4 people are currently reading
184 people want to read
About the author
Colin Wilson
520 books1,286 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.
Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.
Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.
Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 13, 2017
The first three Spiderworld books, released from 1987 onwards, were engrossing fantasy books, full of menace and high adventure. Shadowlands offers a far more thought provoking read, with very little action, very limited adventure and a variant of fantasy which seems very far removed from that of the books written over two decades ago. Here the journey is as much spiritual as physical, and the exploration of new lands is clearly secondary to Wilson's desire to create new creatures and cultures. The trolls and elementals of Shadowlands are rather uninteresting though, even though they offer original territory for the series and are interesting conceptually, they don't create any of the engagement of the warring factions seen before. It's an unfortunate way to offer closure to a great series and although readers of high-brow fantasy will enjoy the narrative style and journey, fans of the originals may be disappointed.
April 4, 2018
Погано одне - що немає продовження. Бо все ж інтересно,чим закінчиться. Но нєт.
А так - норм, читач поступово втягується.
А так - норм, читач поступово втягується.
March 15, 2013
The ending of the Wilson's "Spider World" . Perceived normally, but (in my opinion) not standing next to the first book in the series. I have read it and don't regret the spent time, but a little disappointed. Somehow expected more.
March 15, 2016
His best fiction - if you like fantasy/SF you should enjoy this. Shades of Lord of the Rings in places but with CW's unique take.
February 18, 2025
Shadowland (2002) was Wilson's last work of fiction, and nearly his last significant work. (The exceptions are his autobiography, the excellent but somewhat embarrassingly titled Super Consciousness, and a collaboration with his son.) He is still very much at the top of his form here. (A 2011 stroke laid him low, and he died in 2013 following back surgery.)
Readers are somewhat divided about it, however. The problem is that the series begins as science fiction with a fairly conventional premise, but here has a significantly different feel, because of his introduction of such entities as nature "elementals." Wilson himself, I think, would not have seen a sharp difference in the direction he takes in Shadowland, but many readers will. The reason he feels comfortable with this direction is because of the years of research he'd done at that point on the "supernatural," and the point of view he had developed with respect to "supernatural" phenomena.
So, what is the truth? Does it provide a satisfactory conclusion to the series? (There are three novels that precede it.) The first point to note (which none of the reviews do, in fact, note) is that it wasn't really intended to conclude the series. In the Acknowledgments, he comments that his publisher had encouraged him to work on a novel what would probably actually have concluded the series, to have been titled "New Earth." It's extremely unfortunate that he didn't live to write it, because it would have been Wilson's fictional statement of what he conceived ultimate human destiny to be.
What we do have in Shadowland, however, is a quite satisfying conclusion to the preceding three novels, provided that the reader is able to make the transition from the more conventional premises and characters to the new sorts of entities that he/she will encounter here. In many ways, they are actually quite a bit more intriguing than the spiders that provide the focus in the preceding novels. That's not to say that I consider the existence of entities of this kind to be at all likely (I don't), but they are here convincingly constructed as fiction, particularly in the second half of the novel.
Readers are somewhat divided about it, however. The problem is that the series begins as science fiction with a fairly conventional premise, but here has a significantly different feel, because of his introduction of such entities as nature "elementals." Wilson himself, I think, would not have seen a sharp difference in the direction he takes in Shadowland, but many readers will. The reason he feels comfortable with this direction is because of the years of research he'd done at that point on the "supernatural," and the point of view he had developed with respect to "supernatural" phenomena.
So, what is the truth? Does it provide a satisfactory conclusion to the series? (There are three novels that precede it.) The first point to note (which none of the reviews do, in fact, note) is that it wasn't really intended to conclude the series. In the Acknowledgments, he comments that his publisher had encouraged him to work on a novel what would probably actually have concluded the series, to have been titled "New Earth." It's extremely unfortunate that he didn't live to write it, because it would have been Wilson's fictional statement of what he conceived ultimate human destiny to be.
What we do have in Shadowland, however, is a quite satisfying conclusion to the preceding three novels, provided that the reader is able to make the transition from the more conventional premises and characters to the new sorts of entities that he/she will encounter here. In many ways, they are actually quite a bit more intriguing than the spiders that provide the focus in the preceding novels. That's not to say that I consider the existence of entities of this kind to be at all likely (I don't), but they are here convincingly constructed as fiction, particularly in the second half of the novel.
April 4, 2022
The final book of the series. Niall voyages into the Shadowlands to confront the evil Magician in a quest to save the life of his brother.
Elemental spirits and astral projection.
I was reminded a bit of The Return of the King and also The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
If you are curious about telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and such, please have a look at Latent Power of the Soul.
Elemental spirits and astral projection.
I was reminded a bit of The Return of the King and also The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
If you are curious about telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and such, please have a look at Latent Power of the Soul.
August 7, 2022
Nor good. I wish I'd never found out there was this 4th book. Theres 200 pages of aimless wandering around the landscape looking at things. Then the story happens to Niall. He doesn't do anything, the story just happens around him. And all the women are characterised by their breasts. I did persevere to the end. It was not worth it.
September 21, 2021
This one was a slow starter, but midway both the tempo, context and language floated in a much more satisfying way.
All in all Colin Wilson has built a fascinating world, well worth spending some time with!
All in all Colin Wilson has built a fascinating world, well worth spending some time with!
November 26, 2013
The first third of the book bored me to tears and was a real struggle to get through. Things pick up once there is finally more than one character on the page though. The big plot line that started in the Magician is finished, but a lot of new questions are raised without any resolution. This does not feel like it is the last book in the series and I will be quick disappointed if the story just ends here.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews