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The Land of Long Shadows
These are not tales of survival, but tales of dying.
The unrecognized island nation of Tautito was a scrap of contested territory, caught between two nuclear superpowers. When the end came, birthed by dark and desperate deeds, it shattered the structure of reality itself. Already ruined city streets sunk into a nightmarish quagmire, as gargantuan pillars burst from the landscape to stop the sagging sky from falling in.
From the shadows of a world knocked off kilter, a horrific menagerie of monsters stalk both the living and the dead. Most people, the lucky ones perhaps, went mad, leaving them as little more than wretched beasts, while those that maintained their sanity could only pretend to ask why they were spared.
The Land of Long Shadows is a collection of 11 short stories in a transgressive, post-apocalyptic, dark-fantasy horror setting.
The unrecognized island nation of Tautito was a scrap of contested territory, caught between two nuclear superpowers. When the end came, birthed by dark and desperate deeds, it shattered the structure of reality itself. Already ruined city streets sunk into a nightmarish quagmire, as gargantuan pillars burst from the landscape to stop the sagging sky from falling in.
From the shadows of a world knocked off kilter, a horrific menagerie of monsters stalk both the living and the dead. Most people, the lucky ones perhaps, went mad, leaving them as little more than wretched beasts, while those that maintained their sanity could only pretend to ask why they were spared.
The Land of Long Shadows is a collection of 11 short stories in a transgressive, post-apocalyptic, dark-fantasy horror setting.
487 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 11, 2023
6 people are currently reading
7 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 25, 2025
As of lately, it seems as though every time I decide to review a book outside of the main genres I usually cover, I end up finding a true hidden gem. This time, such a hidden gem belongs to what we might have to label as horror/sci-fi, though it goes way beyond the realms of that genre.
But let’s start from the beginning. When author JJ Shurte first contacted me, the first thing I did (which is a habit of mine) is to go look on Amazon and Goodreads how many reviews, if any, the book had. Then, I might read some of the reviews just to see if I find a common thread. However, none of those reviews, as ‘colorful’ as they were, could have gotten me ready for the experience of reading this ‘little monster’.
I usually don’t particularly enjoy reading books filled with gore and this particular book will get ‘rough’ at times, so if you are very sensitive to reading vivid, detailed, gory scenes, this book might not be for you. What I can assure you though is that the violence and the gore here are intelligently adopted to serve the story and not just for mere shock value. As a matter of fact, many times, when I was expecting something really disturbing to happen, nothing of the sort happened. The author has developed a finesse in choosing his next move wisely at every turn so that readers can never tell what will happen next.
All in all, I would call it ‘transgressive fiction’. But truly, it stands in a class of its own, in my opinion.
PLOT:
Everything takes place on a fictitious island of the Pacific which, according to Shurte, was modeled after Taiwan (where he lived). There was a war of catastrophic proportions which wound up with the island becoming some sort of ‘hell on earth’, in the most crude and terrorizing post-apocalyptic setting. Perhaps a weapon of mass destruction was unleashed which had repercussions not even its creators were able to fully predict—who knows? All we know is that we’re here on this messed up island and the survivors perhaps wished they were dead because some really weird stuff is going on.
The content of the book is divided into 10 chapters and an epilogue. Each chapter follows the perils and whereabouts of different characters and in the epilogue the survivors of each chapter join forces to reach the source of the nightmare that is devastating the island and hopefully put a stop to it.
Chapter 1 – Van Duc Liem leaves the safety of his shelter located in the subway station to scavenge for food and supplies in the infested, post-apocalyptic outside world. Another survivor of the underground community, An-So, will join him. Will they be able to not only find food and supplies, but make it back alive?
Chapter 2 – Doctor Xing-Ya, a long time practitioner of morally-dubious medical procedures, becomes a most interesting patient herself to an abominable creature called Obon’itra.
Chapter 3 – Ai-Na does what she can to survive the new world along with her two children but a chitinous mutation is slowly taking over her whole body. Is she transforming into something else or is something else using her body to burst into reality?
Chapter 4 – Guang-Yan is a tech guy who, along with another group of people, has found “somewhere that had an infrastructure that was easily defensible and had an inbuilt monitoring system. Graeton Prison.” But is the prison really safe against the nightmares lurking outside?
Chapter 5 – Principal Yi-Fan, along with a small handful of students, finds shelter in the school building, while the ‘nightmare’ on the outside keeps banging and trashing to find a way in, through the boarded windows and doors of the facility. But could it be that the adversary is already among them, unknowingly?
Chapter 6 – Li Wen and a group of survivors are captured by a sect of cultists led by Cavan Bolton, who was known as a religious shepherd of sorts even before all hell broke loose. What does Bolton intend to do with this group of trespassers, exactly?
Chapter 7 – Yong-Shi, with the assistance of a strange individual, Kang Bo, needs to go up a 100-story building where he believes his girl Lian-Lei is supposedly held captive. However, by the time he reaches the top, something beyond the scope of his imagination will be revealed to him.
Chapter 8 – When astronaut Matilda lands on the shores of the island, as the only survivor of her space crew, she finds a very different planet Earth from when she first went into orbit.
Chapter 9 – Undercover agent Tai-Xun, of the Shendian Communist Party, real name Yuan Si-Shi, finds herself in enemy territory. But only the dead—and worse—seem all that is left around.
Chapter 10 – A small group of survivors composed mostly by women and led by former professional chef and restaurant owner, Thi, plot to poison the stew made out of a human corpse to poison the men known as Raiders who take advantage of them at will, in exchange for safety and supplies. But things don’t turn out as expected when dinner is served.
Epilogue – We find all the various surviving characters we encounter in chapter 1 through 10 coming together as a ‘team’ led by Bolton in one deadly mission to infiltrate a casino turned into a military facility. It supposedly holds the key to the nightmare that has engulfed the island.
WHY WE NEED MORE SHURTES:
What I admire the most about Shurte’s approach to this narrative is how he dives headfirst into this project with complete abandonment and taking maximum creative freedom. He is not trying to cater to a certain demographic or suck up to some publisher who wants cookie-cutter stories. I laughed, I cried, I scratched my head while I was reading this thing, exactly because it felt so organic, so spontaneous, so deliberate that I stopped thinking in terms of a horror story altogether. It became a story like no other—rich in originality, humanity, sadness, happiness, humor, action, drama, sexuality, and everything that makes up the full spectrum of human emotions.
Sometimes, I had to stop to breathe, and I would be forced to re-read the scene saying to myself: “He really didn’t just do what I think I read he did!” Those moments will always remain vivid in my mind.
Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, for me, personally, were extremely intense because the prose is top notch, the characters so full of life, and the stories so way out of my comfort zone.
Granted not all stories reach that same peak intensity but they all serve a grand scheme which will be made clear in the closing epilogue.
EXPOSITION DUMP: ZERO
If you are looking for a book where everything gets spoon-fed to you, this one is not for you. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that Shurte enjoys giving readers the bare minimum, just crumbs really, so that their heads can spin and try to come up with their own deductions or explanations. I’d be lying if I said many times I didn’t feel lost myself:
Why did only the scum of the world survive the war?
Why can all the survivors suddenly understand one another even when they originally spoke different languages?
Why is it that in this post-apocalyptic world people no longer know how to read?
So many unanswered questions and yet it kept enticing me to keep reading, keep peeling off layer after layer, trying to get to the core of it all.
ONE MINOR ISSUE:
As I mentioned earlier, this story takes place on a fictional island in the Pacific which resembles Taiwan and most of its characters are supposed to be modeled after Taiwanese men and women. However, the way the characters speak, their sense of humor, their foul mouths, their disrespectful attitude, their boasting, all made them feel to me as Westerners through and through. I never got a sense that these were Asian-Pacific folk at all, other than by their names.
CONCLUSIONS:
There is a reason why this book is special. It has nothing to do with the genre or even the story, but with the fact that it sets an example of how a writer should take charge of their own creativity and write based on that without any restraints or reservations. Couple that with an original plot, unforgettable characters, razor sharp prose, and you get something that is dearly missing in the book industry today.
Legends in the making!
🦀
But let’s start from the beginning. When author JJ Shurte first contacted me, the first thing I did (which is a habit of mine) is to go look on Amazon and Goodreads how many reviews, if any, the book had. Then, I might read some of the reviews just to see if I find a common thread. However, none of those reviews, as ‘colorful’ as they were, could have gotten me ready for the experience of reading this ‘little monster’.
I usually don’t particularly enjoy reading books filled with gore and this particular book will get ‘rough’ at times, so if you are very sensitive to reading vivid, detailed, gory scenes, this book might not be for you. What I can assure you though is that the violence and the gore here are intelligently adopted to serve the story and not just for mere shock value. As a matter of fact, many times, when I was expecting something really disturbing to happen, nothing of the sort happened. The author has developed a finesse in choosing his next move wisely at every turn so that readers can never tell what will happen next.
All in all, I would call it ‘transgressive fiction’. But truly, it stands in a class of its own, in my opinion.
PLOT:
Everything takes place on a fictitious island of the Pacific which, according to Shurte, was modeled after Taiwan (where he lived). There was a war of catastrophic proportions which wound up with the island becoming some sort of ‘hell on earth’, in the most crude and terrorizing post-apocalyptic setting. Perhaps a weapon of mass destruction was unleashed which had repercussions not even its creators were able to fully predict—who knows? All we know is that we’re here on this messed up island and the survivors perhaps wished they were dead because some really weird stuff is going on.
The content of the book is divided into 10 chapters and an epilogue. Each chapter follows the perils and whereabouts of different characters and in the epilogue the survivors of each chapter join forces to reach the source of the nightmare that is devastating the island and hopefully put a stop to it.
Chapter 1 – Van Duc Liem leaves the safety of his shelter located in the subway station to scavenge for food and supplies in the infested, post-apocalyptic outside world. Another survivor of the underground community, An-So, will join him. Will they be able to not only find food and supplies, but make it back alive?
Chapter 2 – Doctor Xing-Ya, a long time practitioner of morally-dubious medical procedures, becomes a most interesting patient herself to an abominable creature called Obon’itra.
Chapter 3 – Ai-Na does what she can to survive the new world along with her two children but a chitinous mutation is slowly taking over her whole body. Is she transforming into something else or is something else using her body to burst into reality?
Chapter 4 – Guang-Yan is a tech guy who, along with another group of people, has found “somewhere that had an infrastructure that was easily defensible and had an inbuilt monitoring system. Graeton Prison.” But is the prison really safe against the nightmares lurking outside?
Chapter 5 – Principal Yi-Fan, along with a small handful of students, finds shelter in the school building, while the ‘nightmare’ on the outside keeps banging and trashing to find a way in, through the boarded windows and doors of the facility. But could it be that the adversary is already among them, unknowingly?
Chapter 6 – Li Wen and a group of survivors are captured by a sect of cultists led by Cavan Bolton, who was known as a religious shepherd of sorts even before all hell broke loose. What does Bolton intend to do with this group of trespassers, exactly?
Chapter 7 – Yong-Shi, with the assistance of a strange individual, Kang Bo, needs to go up a 100-story building where he believes his girl Lian-Lei is supposedly held captive. However, by the time he reaches the top, something beyond the scope of his imagination will be revealed to him.
Chapter 8 – When astronaut Matilda lands on the shores of the island, as the only survivor of her space crew, she finds a very different planet Earth from when she first went into orbit.
Chapter 9 – Undercover agent Tai-Xun, of the Shendian Communist Party, real name Yuan Si-Shi, finds herself in enemy territory. But only the dead—and worse—seem all that is left around.
Chapter 10 – A small group of survivors composed mostly by women and led by former professional chef and restaurant owner, Thi, plot to poison the stew made out of a human corpse to poison the men known as Raiders who take advantage of them at will, in exchange for safety and supplies. But things don’t turn out as expected when dinner is served.
Epilogue – We find all the various surviving characters we encounter in chapter 1 through 10 coming together as a ‘team’ led by Bolton in one deadly mission to infiltrate a casino turned into a military facility. It supposedly holds the key to the nightmare that has engulfed the island.
WHY WE NEED MORE SHURTES:
What I admire the most about Shurte’s approach to this narrative is how he dives headfirst into this project with complete abandonment and taking maximum creative freedom. He is not trying to cater to a certain demographic or suck up to some publisher who wants cookie-cutter stories. I laughed, I cried, I scratched my head while I was reading this thing, exactly because it felt so organic, so spontaneous, so deliberate that I stopped thinking in terms of a horror story altogether. It became a story like no other—rich in originality, humanity, sadness, happiness, humor, action, drama, sexuality, and everything that makes up the full spectrum of human emotions.
Sometimes, I had to stop to breathe, and I would be forced to re-read the scene saying to myself: “He really didn’t just do what I think I read he did!” Those moments will always remain vivid in my mind.
Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, for me, personally, were extremely intense because the prose is top notch, the characters so full of life, and the stories so way out of my comfort zone.
Granted not all stories reach that same peak intensity but they all serve a grand scheme which will be made clear in the closing epilogue.
EXPOSITION DUMP: ZERO
If you are looking for a book where everything gets spoon-fed to you, this one is not for you. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that Shurte enjoys giving readers the bare minimum, just crumbs really, so that their heads can spin and try to come up with their own deductions or explanations. I’d be lying if I said many times I didn’t feel lost myself:
Why did only the scum of the world survive the war?
Why can all the survivors suddenly understand one another even when they originally spoke different languages?
Why is it that in this post-apocalyptic world people no longer know how to read?
So many unanswered questions and yet it kept enticing me to keep reading, keep peeling off layer after layer, trying to get to the core of it all.
ONE MINOR ISSUE:
As I mentioned earlier, this story takes place on a fictional island in the Pacific which resembles Taiwan and most of its characters are supposed to be modeled after Taiwanese men and women. However, the way the characters speak, their sense of humor, their foul mouths, their disrespectful attitude, their boasting, all made them feel to me as Westerners through and through. I never got a sense that these were Asian-Pacific folk at all, other than by their names.
CONCLUSIONS:
There is a reason why this book is special. It has nothing to do with the genre or even the story, but with the fact that it sets an example of how a writer should take charge of their own creativity and write based on that without any restraints or reservations. Couple that with an original plot, unforgettable characters, razor sharp prose, and you get something that is dearly missing in the book industry today.
Legends in the making!
🦀
October 13, 2023
‘The Worst of Us’
A final World War. A Manhattan Project 2.0. A last-gasp experiment which literally unravels the fabric of reality…. But all of this is just prologue.
The tales that unfold in The Land of Long Shadows could be called many things: cryptic, disgusting, enervating, gratuitous—yet also intriguing and refreshingly unorthodox. Set in the remnants of an Asiatic island nation untold years after the war’s cosmic crescendo, we meet a steady cortège of damned souls inexplicably going about everyday lives in a hellscape teaming with Lovecraftian horrors, frenzied apparitions, once-human wretches and deranged cultists.
Initially such mundane behavior comes off as odd for denizens of this nightmarish setting; even unrealistic. (We’re still fretting over adolescent slights and cheating spouses when mammoth tentacled monstrosities are prowling?) But as tale after macabre tale plays out to its gruesome conclusion, it becomes increasingly clear: this is not so much a functioning world as a mystic tableau haunted by humanity’s peurilities and atrocities. And only the very worst of us thrive in this apocalypse—the perverse, the homicidal, the sociopathic, and the openly psychotic.
This is not a gentle read. Its omniscient narrator seems not only largely unsympathetic toward the characters, but almost gratified by their downfall—like some livid Old Testament deity gleefully smiting his faulty creations. However, there are sparks of illumination. Even a compelling take on the metaphysical roots of wickedness which lends context and function to all the human misery.
I’ve a few issues worth mentioning— Not every story lands with quite the same oomph. The stronger are wonderfully twisted little tales of self-delusion, broken dreams and comeuppance; the lesser beat around the bush too much, wallowing in the omnipresent muck. I found the more prolonged passages of extreme violence (and violation) to, at times, undermine otherwise sharp prose, muddying the clarity of a scene’s action and intent. And there is a tendency of some characters to lapse into unwieldy exposition and heavy-handed soapboxing. But it is a credit to the work’s creativity that this did not deter me from exploring the rich, morbidly absorbing world imagined here.
It’s one part elegy, one part pulpy ‘Tales From the Crypt’ retribution, a dash of the The Leftovers’ ruminative post-Rapture ennui, and one massive helping of fascinating, dizzying cosmological mythos. Quibbles aside, it’s a gutsy (in every sense), unconventional collection and makes me wish more independent fiction would swing for the fences. An indie scene is there to do what the mainstream simply cannot—take risks. Recommended (to those with a strong stomach).
A final World War. A Manhattan Project 2.0. A last-gasp experiment which literally unravels the fabric of reality…. But all of this is just prologue.
The tales that unfold in The Land of Long Shadows could be called many things: cryptic, disgusting, enervating, gratuitous—yet also intriguing and refreshingly unorthodox. Set in the remnants of an Asiatic island nation untold years after the war’s cosmic crescendo, we meet a steady cortège of damned souls inexplicably going about everyday lives in a hellscape teaming with Lovecraftian horrors, frenzied apparitions, once-human wretches and deranged cultists.
Initially such mundane behavior comes off as odd for denizens of this nightmarish setting; even unrealistic. (We’re still fretting over adolescent slights and cheating spouses when mammoth tentacled monstrosities are prowling?) But as tale after macabre tale plays out to its gruesome conclusion, it becomes increasingly clear: this is not so much a functioning world as a mystic tableau haunted by humanity’s peurilities and atrocities. And only the very worst of us thrive in this apocalypse—the perverse, the homicidal, the sociopathic, and the openly psychotic.
This is not a gentle read. Its omniscient narrator seems not only largely unsympathetic toward the characters, but almost gratified by their downfall—like some livid Old Testament deity gleefully smiting his faulty creations. However, there are sparks of illumination. Even a compelling take on the metaphysical roots of wickedness which lends context and function to all the human misery.
I’ve a few issues worth mentioning— Not every story lands with quite the same oomph. The stronger are wonderfully twisted little tales of self-delusion, broken dreams and comeuppance; the lesser beat around the bush too much, wallowing in the omnipresent muck. I found the more prolonged passages of extreme violence (and violation) to, at times, undermine otherwise sharp prose, muddying the clarity of a scene’s action and intent. And there is a tendency of some characters to lapse into unwieldy exposition and heavy-handed soapboxing. But it is a credit to the work’s creativity that this did not deter me from exploring the rich, morbidly absorbing world imagined here.
It’s one part elegy, one part pulpy ‘Tales From the Crypt’ retribution, a dash of the The Leftovers’ ruminative post-Rapture ennui, and one massive helping of fascinating, dizzying cosmological mythos. Quibbles aside, it’s a gutsy (in every sense), unconventional collection and makes me wish more independent fiction would swing for the fences. An indie scene is there to do what the mainstream simply cannot—take risks. Recommended (to those with a strong stomach).
September 26, 2025
Not sure what the point was
It gets four stars because it’s imaginative and well written. But…
This is a pointless (as far as I can see anyway) rambling set of tales that are vaguely related. The narrative is inconstant to the point that I lost count of the times that I had to stop and go back thinking “wait, when did that happen????”
It is dark. Very dark and very deranged at times…but I believe that was the author’s intention. Chaos pure.
The last 20% of the book was a slog…..the author seemed to be trying to tie the previous stories together, but so much was left unclear… It doesn’t end in any expected way.
Not everyone’s taste and not an easy read….but it was an interesting exercise nevertheless.
It gets four stars because it’s imaginative and well written. But…
This is a pointless (as far as I can see anyway) rambling set of tales that are vaguely related. The narrative is inconstant to the point that I lost count of the times that I had to stop and go back thinking “wait, when did that happen????”
It is dark. Very dark and very deranged at times…but I believe that was the author’s intention. Chaos pure.
The last 20% of the book was a slog…..the author seemed to be trying to tie the previous stories together, but so much was left unclear… It doesn’t end in any expected way.
Not everyone’s taste and not an easy read….but it was an interesting exercise nevertheless.
October 13, 2023
Tantalizing mysteries pull you through
The book has an interesting take on a post apocalyptic world that has you reading through to piece together the mystery of the world, much like the people in the world scrabbling for scraps.
The book has an interesting take on a post apocalyptic world that has you reading through to piece together the mystery of the world, much like the people in the world scrabbling for scraps.
September 7, 2023
What in the @#$% did I just read?!?!?!
I generally stay away from transgressive fiction, but reading this author's other works, I really had no choice but to try it. He's that good.
It's off the charts.
I often found myself battling as to whether to put it away for later or stay up all night because I JUST HAD TO KNOW. That's what was going through my brain while reading... I just had to know what was next, what this was all about.
It's fantastic and I loved it and I want more.
I generally stay away from transgressive fiction, but reading this author's other works, I really had no choice but to try it. He's that good.
It's off the charts.
I often found myself battling as to whether to put it away for later or stay up all night because I JUST HAD TO KNOW. That's what was going through my brain while reading... I just had to know what was next, what this was all about.
It's fantastic and I loved it and I want more.
January 6, 2026
This book was far longer than it needed to be, with many scenes repeating the same ideas without adding much. The loose, episodic structure was also confusing, making it hard to tell what matters and where the story was actually going. Instead of making the world feel bigger or scarier, the extra length and unclear structure just drag the book down.
*This review is being made after the author confronted me about my star rating, 2 years after the fact. He didn't seem to believe I read it, so I am giving my honest review, based on my faint memory of it.
*This review is being made after the author confronted me about my star rating, 2 years after the fact. He didn't seem to believe I read it, so I am giving my honest review, based on my faint memory of it.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews