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Laughing Boy's Shadow
My name is Declan Shea. I never thought I was monster. My life changed overnight. I was driving home from a gig when a tramp stepped out in front of my car. I killed him. I know I did. But no-one believed me. The medical staff at the hospital insisted he was the result of some sort of hallucination because trauma sustained during the accident. I tried to convince them otherwise, but the more I protested, the more obvious it became to them that I had damaged more than just my ribs in the crash, so I started to lie to keep them happy. I pretended he wasn't there. But he was. He was everywhere. And he was determined to destroy my life and take away everything I loved in revenge. How do you fight a monster no-one else can see? This is what he reduced my life to. I am stopped being Declan Shea that night and became someone else entirely. I became a monster.
267 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
About the author
Steven Savile
250 books249 followersSteven Savile (born October 12, 1969, in Newcastle, England) is a British fantasy, horror and thriller writer, and editor living in Sala, Sweden.
Under the Ronan Frost penname (inspired by the hero of his bestselling novel, Silver) he has also written the action thriller White Peak, and as Matt Langley was a finalist for the People's Book Prize.
Under the Ronan Frost penname (inspired by the hero of his bestselling novel, Silver) he has also written the action thriller White Peak, and as Matt Langley was a finalist for the People's Book Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 12, 2019
I received a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.
Let me start by saying that this is another one of those stories (just finished one) in which it’s just so good and different, but there are barely any reviews, meaning not many people have had the privilege of reading or listening to it. That’s so sad! And I just looked at the Amazon listing for it, and there’s no cover photo! ☹ It's like these great stories just get swept under the rug.
Anyways, I love the title. It’s just so unique, just like the story itself. This is one of those stories that isn’t my usual cup of tea. So, when I go about reading/listening to something different, I’m always surprised when I finish and like it. I don’t know why, but yeah…
If you’re looking for an attention-grabber, gets-your-brain-thinking, pulls-you-in-and-doesn’t-want-to-let-go type of story, then this is the one for you.
I loved it up until the very end. My issue with the ending was the fact Declan essentially apologized about having killed some of the tramps (the ones that almost killed him!) once he learned the truth about his girlfriend’s murder. I get that he was mad at Malachi for lying and deceiving him, but still! The tramps went around killing, hurting, destroying, manipulating…anyone they seemed to come into contact with. Wasn’t Malachi’s end goal to protect the city? I get that Declan didn’t want the job, but…
My only question relates to how Declan lived once he killed Malachi. I thought Malachi was the one keeping him alive. So how did he not die as well?
The narrator did an awesome job; I have no issues with his skills. He has a great accent that went well for the story, I think. I'd definitely listened to him again.
Let me start by saying that this is another one of those stories (just finished one) in which it’s just so good and different, but there are barely any reviews, meaning not many people have had the privilege of reading or listening to it. That’s so sad! And I just looked at the Amazon listing for it, and there’s no cover photo! ☹ It's like these great stories just get swept under the rug.
Anyways, I love the title. It’s just so unique, just like the story itself. This is one of those stories that isn’t my usual cup of tea. So, when I go about reading/listening to something different, I’m always surprised when I finish and like it. I don’t know why, but yeah…
If you’re looking for an attention-grabber, gets-your-brain-thinking, pulls-you-in-and-doesn’t-want-to-let-go type of story, then this is the one for you.
I loved it up until the very end. My issue with the ending was the fact Declan essentially apologized about having killed some of the tramps (the ones that almost killed him!) once he learned the truth about his girlfriend’s murder. I get that he was mad at Malachi for lying and deceiving him, but still! The tramps went around killing, hurting, destroying, manipulating…anyone they seemed to come into contact with. Wasn’t Malachi’s end goal to protect the city? I get that Declan didn’t want the job, but…
My only question relates to how Declan lived once he killed Malachi. I thought Malachi was the one keeping him alive. So how did he not die as well?
The narrator did an awesome job; I have no issues with his skills. He has a great accent that went well for the story, I think. I'd definitely listened to him again.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 27, 2019
The author does a great job using descriptive writing to create a bleak and creepy story
The narration was good and despite some parts I found slow I enjoyed this overall
I received a free review audiobook and voluntarily left this review
The narration was good and despite some parts I found slow I enjoyed this overall
I received a free review audiobook and voluntarily left this review
March 30, 2008
"Laughing Boy’s Shadow" is the first person perspective narrative of the tragically named Declan Shea, who is a jazz pianist and, by a strange quirk of literary cliché, the only “white light” in the city of Newcastle. Because most of this review is negative, I feel compelled to mention how a lot of the elements of this story had great potential to invite deep thoughts on the moral issues of life in a modern city. But for all of this potential, the elements are rendered in a lackluster manner which is long on visual description, and short on attaching emotional significance to any of the scenes as they play out.
It’s hard to decide where to begin in detailing what went wrong with this book, because very little of the threads in this tale ever get woven into the fabric of the storyline. But to be sure, one of the main flaws lies in the narrator’s emotional handicaps. During the first fifty pages, Declan whines a lot. His whining combined with his constant inconsistencies in describing the scenes kills the emotional impact of every key plot point. Which is a shame, because the imagery and attention to visual detail is superb when Declan is describing blood gushing bodies. The failure lies in tying those bodies to anything else happening in the story.
The book opens with Declan driving home from a late night out, and he describes hitting an old man who walks out in front of his car. Declan tries to stop, and the rain causes the car to slide into the old man. Declan gets out of the car in spite of a punctured lung and walks a block to not just look at the old man, but to kneel beside him and wax philosophical about how he is now a murderer. He gets up, walks back to the car, calls 999, and fetches an ambulance before the punctured lung finally makes him collapse.
Inconsistencies like this litter the story. Without giving away the reason why, Declan is supposed to be only able to see in grays, but only a chapter later, he sees color just fine. Two chapters later, he is in a bathtub to rinse blood off of himself, and his girlfriend comes in for what shouldn’t be a romantic sex scene because the tub is full of blood stained water. In fact, if the water had retained its bloody tinting, the creepy sex scene could have been worked into the character’s earlier missives about rebirth. Instead, Declan tries to render a romantic scene for the reader.
But it’s not romantic even if the narrator forgets the blood entirely. Only passages before, the girlfriend is described as “having let herself go,” so presumably, she has not bathed in a few days. And yet the narrator tells us Aimee smells like roses. When the act is complete, the color blind narrator tells us that the water is stained blue-black by the wool sweater Aimee never took off before their wet sex scene. Setting aside that Declan shouldn’t have been able to see blue, the water should have been dark purple for the blood in it. And again, this scene couldn’t be romantic for me, because all I could think was “Eeew, they’re fucking in a bloody tub.”
Setting those flaws aside, there’s the awful character names like Declan, Cirrian, Crohak, Malachi, and Chaz. Then there’s the subplot of Declan being “the only one who can bring balance to the city,” which one would presume should be the main plot. Instead, the narrator takes readers down a revenge story, running through the deaths of three tramps in a choppy hectic pace before he moves to a “big twist” that really isn’t because it was foreshadowed all throughout the book.
And finally, there is the utter hypocrisy of the narrator’s final decisions, when he is suddenly all too eager to condone genocide before he turns his back on the mess he’s created. Ultimately, the narrator decides that even if he’s a "white light," with mixtures of both good and evil, the real answer to all of society’s ills is a good old fashioned lynch mob. He starts out a hypocrite, and he ends one as well. And nothing in his actions changes anything or saves anyone. All of this could be forgiven if the story as whole generated any emotion besides annoyance. But it never does. Even the most chilling gore scene is stripped of its power to haunt by Declan's whining.
If you are looking for horrific gore and interesting dialogue, this is a good book. The writing is competent, and the editing is good with only a few random typos missed. But the cost of this book for me was close to $40 with international shipping, and I’m sorry, I don’t believe the story was that good to warrant the high price. I don’t think I’d feel quite as disappointed if this were a TPB for $10, or even if it were a Lulu special for $15. But for $40, I was expecting something spectacular, and what I got was a lot of great scenery with little depth to support the illusion. So I guess I feel much like Declan does at the end of watching a movie; I’m left with a blank screen and an understanding that all along, it was all just a trick.
It’s hard to decide where to begin in detailing what went wrong with this book, because very little of the threads in this tale ever get woven into the fabric of the storyline. But to be sure, one of the main flaws lies in the narrator’s emotional handicaps. During the first fifty pages, Declan whines a lot. His whining combined with his constant inconsistencies in describing the scenes kills the emotional impact of every key plot point. Which is a shame, because the imagery and attention to visual detail is superb when Declan is describing blood gushing bodies. The failure lies in tying those bodies to anything else happening in the story.
The book opens with Declan driving home from a late night out, and he describes hitting an old man who walks out in front of his car. Declan tries to stop, and the rain causes the car to slide into the old man. Declan gets out of the car in spite of a punctured lung and walks a block to not just look at the old man, but to kneel beside him and wax philosophical about how he is now a murderer. He gets up, walks back to the car, calls 999, and fetches an ambulance before the punctured lung finally makes him collapse.
Inconsistencies like this litter the story. Without giving away the reason why, Declan is supposed to be only able to see in grays, but only a chapter later, he sees color just fine. Two chapters later, he is in a bathtub to rinse blood off of himself, and his girlfriend comes in for what shouldn’t be a romantic sex scene because the tub is full of blood stained water. In fact, if the water had retained its bloody tinting, the creepy sex scene could have been worked into the character’s earlier missives about rebirth. Instead, Declan tries to render a romantic scene for the reader.
But it’s not romantic even if the narrator forgets the blood entirely. Only passages before, the girlfriend is described as “having let herself go,” so presumably, she has not bathed in a few days. And yet the narrator tells us Aimee smells like roses. When the act is complete, the color blind narrator tells us that the water is stained blue-black by the wool sweater Aimee never took off before their wet sex scene. Setting aside that Declan shouldn’t have been able to see blue, the water should have been dark purple for the blood in it. And again, this scene couldn’t be romantic for me, because all I could think was “Eeew, they’re fucking in a bloody tub.”
Setting those flaws aside, there’s the awful character names like Declan, Cirrian, Crohak, Malachi, and Chaz. Then there’s the subplot of Declan being “the only one who can bring balance to the city,” which one would presume should be the main plot. Instead, the narrator takes readers down a revenge story, running through the deaths of three tramps in a choppy hectic pace before he moves to a “big twist” that really isn’t because it was foreshadowed all throughout the book.
And finally, there is the utter hypocrisy of the narrator’s final decisions, when he is suddenly all too eager to condone genocide before he turns his back on the mess he’s created. Ultimately, the narrator decides that even if he’s a "white light," with mixtures of both good and evil, the real answer to all of society’s ills is a good old fashioned lynch mob. He starts out a hypocrite, and he ends one as well. And nothing in his actions changes anything or saves anyone. All of this could be forgiven if the story as whole generated any emotion besides annoyance. But it never does. Even the most chilling gore scene is stripped of its power to haunt by Declan's whining.
If you are looking for horrific gore and interesting dialogue, this is a good book. The writing is competent, and the editing is good with only a few random typos missed. But the cost of this book for me was close to $40 with international shipping, and I’m sorry, I don’t believe the story was that good to warrant the high price. I don’t think I’d feel quite as disappointed if this were a TPB for $10, or even if it were a Lulu special for $15. But for $40, I was expecting something spectacular, and what I got was a lot of great scenery with little depth to support the illusion. So I guess I feel much like Declan does at the end of watching a movie; I’m left with a blank screen and an understanding that all along, it was all just a trick.
January 20, 2014
Review copy
In the introduction to Laughing Boy's Shadow, writer Gary A. Braunbeck says, "The best horror fiction concerns itself with exploring the connections between violence, grief, loneliness, and suffering, and how we as a species reconcile these things with a concept of a Just universe watched over by a supposedly loving Supreme Being wherein even the most mundane and trivial of our everyday tasks carry some kind of greater meaning."
The above is as good a definition of horror as I've ever heard and this early work by Steven Savile certainly fits the bill. Declan Shea is a piano player, the kind that plays in bars, and is on his way home from a gig at 3am when he strikes a tramp by the side of the road and wraps his car around a lamppost. At least that's the way he remembers it. And so begins a downward spiral into a nightmare world where Declan loses everything and becomes a pawn in a battle for the very life of the city of Newcastle, England.
After losing his eyes, Declan is promised his sight back, but to do this he must take eyes from two dogs in the underground world where he finds himself. Savile is a skilled writer and adept at making the reader squirm. "' Forgive me' I whispered into its ear, bringing the knife to bear. I was by no means deft. The knifeblade sliced into the soft flesh of the dog's jowls before it hooked up and cut out the sac beneath the eye. The dog stiffened beneath my hands, letting loose a yelping whine that was utterly sickening. I held back, unable to push the knife further and finish my theft. The thought of digging through the strings of muscle attaching the eye to cut the nerve and sever those ties turned my stomach. I couldn't do it."
Laughing Boy's Shadow is like nothing I've ever read. At times beautiful and at times brutal it never fails to keep the reader totally engaged in an imaginative story that kept its secrets right to the end.
Laughing Boy's Shadow is not a new story, but it is certainly worth a read and is available as an ebook from Crossroad Press and Macabre Ink Digital at Amazon.com.
Highly recommended.
In the introduction to Laughing Boy's Shadow, writer Gary A. Braunbeck says, "The best horror fiction concerns itself with exploring the connections between violence, grief, loneliness, and suffering, and how we as a species reconcile these things with a concept of a Just universe watched over by a supposedly loving Supreme Being wherein even the most mundane and trivial of our everyday tasks carry some kind of greater meaning."
The above is as good a definition of horror as I've ever heard and this early work by Steven Savile certainly fits the bill. Declan Shea is a piano player, the kind that plays in bars, and is on his way home from a gig at 3am when he strikes a tramp by the side of the road and wraps his car around a lamppost. At least that's the way he remembers it. And so begins a downward spiral into a nightmare world where Declan loses everything and becomes a pawn in a battle for the very life of the city of Newcastle, England.
After losing his eyes, Declan is promised his sight back, but to do this he must take eyes from two dogs in the underground world where he finds himself. Savile is a skilled writer and adept at making the reader squirm. "' Forgive me' I whispered into its ear, bringing the knife to bear. I was by no means deft. The knifeblade sliced into the soft flesh of the dog's jowls before it hooked up and cut out the sac beneath the eye. The dog stiffened beneath my hands, letting loose a yelping whine that was utterly sickening. I held back, unable to push the knife further and finish my theft. The thought of digging through the strings of muscle attaching the eye to cut the nerve and sever those ties turned my stomach. I couldn't do it."
Laughing Boy's Shadow is like nothing I've ever read. At times beautiful and at times brutal it never fails to keep the reader totally engaged in an imaginative story that kept its secrets right to the end.
Laughing Boy's Shadow is not a new story, but it is certainly worth a read and is available as an ebook from Crossroad Press and Macabre Ink Digital at Amazon.com.
Highly recommended.
May 21, 2008
This novel, the first one Steven Savile wrote at age 25, is well-written, scary in many places, and ultimately very, very dark. Close to depressing, in fact.
There are a few issues with it, mainly a tendency to slow down the narrative with excessive description, but for a first novel, it's a fine accomplishment and an enjoyable read. Especially if you like your fiction grim and dark.
There are a few issues with it, mainly a tendency to slow down the narrative with excessive description, but for a first novel, it's a fine accomplishment and an enjoyable read. Especially if you like your fiction grim and dark.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews