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Demon Shadows
Attempting to revive his stalled career, writer Paul Fleming visits the Thorburn Colony for Artists and Writers in the heart of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where he falls in love with a lovely artist and encounters an unspeakable evil
- GenresHorror
Mass Market Paperback
First published July 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 22, 2026
The cover is superb and I was really looking forward to read this one. Well, the story started strong with a colony of white settlers, the Thorburn Colony and what they faced in a hard winter. Then the narration shifted to modern times. The Colony is an exclusive resort to artists with some kind of block. Paul Fleming, an author is among them. Soon his creativity returns and he sees that something is wrong in this place. Shadows of the past? What about Mr Black, the water babies and missing guests? Are there demons on the loose? This tale definitely had its creepy moments but overall the storytelling was confusing and not very convincing. But even with all its weaknesses I liked the eerie book and the intriguing lore. There was even reference to the Donner company. Ideal for dark and cold winter nights. Recommended!
October 3, 2025
Michael B. Sirota might be my new favorite author. I'm going to have to find more of his books now that I've read Demon Shadows!
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Paul Fleming, a divorced writer, has come to the colony to beat his writer's block and satisfy his publishers. While he works on his next best seller, he falls in love with an eccentric artist . . . and then he begins to have nightmares . . . dreams connected to the disturbing fate of a group of pioneers that became snowbound in the mountains and had to make a dark deal to survive . . . a debt that is still owed to this day!
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This cover stood out to me when I first spotted it in a thrift store a thousand years ago, and I've been kicking myself ever since for not picking it up then. Especially after I forgot the title of the book and spent years looking for "the one with a skeleton, a pentagram, and a snowy backdrop on the cover." After that long search, I've finally found and read Demon Shadows.
.
.
All that hype, I worried it wouldn't live up to whatever my expectations were . . . but Demon Shadows REALLY surprised me. You kind of get the best of both worlds with this story. It starts as a slow burning, atmospheric, dreamy, quiet horror novel . . . and then in the literal last fifteen pages, it goes ALL IN on gory, supernatural carnage! The climax of this book is super bloody and gruesome, and reminded me (somewhat) of the film Ready or Not!
.
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Demon Shadows will be a patience tester for some folks, since there really isn't a lot of "horror" until the last act, but I LIKE slow burners. I especially like them when the characters are as endearing and unique as these ones are! And the icy, chilly, winter-set environment made me feel so cozy while I was reading!
.
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If you like ritualistic horror, nightmares, psychotronic/trippy vibes, and a gradual build to the gushy stuff . . . seek out a copy of Demon Shadows! This is going on my "best reads of the year" list!
.
.
Paul Fleming, a divorced writer, has come to the colony to beat his writer's block and satisfy his publishers. While he works on his next best seller, he falls in love with an eccentric artist . . . and then he begins to have nightmares . . . dreams connected to the disturbing fate of a group of pioneers that became snowbound in the mountains and had to make a dark deal to survive . . . a debt that is still owed to this day!
.
.
This cover stood out to me when I first spotted it in a thrift store a thousand years ago, and I've been kicking myself ever since for not picking it up then. Especially after I forgot the title of the book and spent years looking for "the one with a skeleton, a pentagram, and a snowy backdrop on the cover." After that long search, I've finally found and read Demon Shadows.
.
.
All that hype, I worried it wouldn't live up to whatever my expectations were . . . but Demon Shadows REALLY surprised me. You kind of get the best of both worlds with this story. It starts as a slow burning, atmospheric, dreamy, quiet horror novel . . . and then in the literal last fifteen pages, it goes ALL IN on gory, supernatural carnage! The climax of this book is super bloody and gruesome, and reminded me (somewhat) of the film Ready or Not!
.
.
Demon Shadows will be a patience tester for some folks, since there really isn't a lot of "horror" until the last act, but I LIKE slow burners. I especially like them when the characters are as endearing and unique as these ones are! And the icy, chilly, winter-set environment made me feel so cozy while I was reading!
.
.
If you like ritualistic horror, nightmares, psychotronic/trippy vibes, and a gradual build to the gushy stuff . . . seek out a copy of Demon Shadows! This is going on my "best reads of the year" list!
May 20, 2017
This one hung out on my Kindle for so long and today it was a why not sort of a choice. Not a particularly inspired choice, not a particularly inspired book. Perfectly decent with serviceable writing one might expect from a fairly prolific midlist all over genre wise author, but neither original nor striking in any way. Yes, small towns are creepy. Yes, using Native American lore is neat. But then what...Kinda expected more, it started off promising enough, I like historical backstories, the remote artist colony was an interesting concept, the narrative moved along nicely. And then, right around the time of a particularly atrocious, embarrassingly cheesy and utterly gratuitous sex scene the story started the steady slide downhill. Not terrible by any means, reasonably entertaining, just doesn't really have that certain something that best case scenario translates to wow and otherwise just makes for a good diversion. This was more along the lines of steadily average and slightly south of that. Also, despite taking place during some brutal winter weather did nothing to relieve the 90 degree meltdown. So apparently not a transporting sort of read.
December 6, 2014
"Demon Shadows" is another great story from author Mike Sirota. The novel starts a hundred or so years ago, with a series of mysterious events that will set the stage for the contemporary story-line. A sense of forbidding melancholy permeate the plot that unfolds around a struggling author who has sought out a remote writer's colony in order to surmount a terrible case of writer's block. What he finds there makes for a great, rainy afternoon read.
December 12, 2022
The writing isn't terrible...but the plot is.
Plenty of dated elements with a final reveal that just doesn't make a lot of sense.
Plenty of dated elements with a final reveal that just doesn't make a lot of sense.
January 7, 2014
I finished this book a few days ago, and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it. On one hand I really liked the mixture of Indian "Legends" that was incorporated into this novel; as well as the "diaries" of John Thorburn that were recorded at the same time. Heck, I even enjoyed the "current" plight of the main character Paul Fleming as he battles "writers block" to the point that he agrees to being sent to the remote wilderness to work in "spartan conditions" in order to get the creative juices flowing, and a new novel churned out.
However... there was too much of this novel that just did not add up. For the sake of my readers, I'm going to try and break this down in a +/- sort of way.
+ The underlying "evil" that occurs throughout this story is original, and not something that I have seen before.
+/- With the exception of a few "dead" parts, the story moves fast enough that you keep reading to find out if your assumptions are correct (or maybe you're like me and can't put aside a story once you've started it, no matter what your feelings are).
- The characters are (for the most part) entirely way too one dimensional. With few exceptions, there is little to no back-story to explain why they act the way they do. Even those characters whose stories are eventually explained... it feels less like an explanation of their behavior as a character and more like the author saying "this is how I want to end it and this is why I will end it this way". For some of the characters, I felt this was too out of context and took away from the overall plot instead of being a "surprise" event.
Don't get me wrong, there were portions of this book that I liked, and portions that I didn't.. this book will appeal to some people, but not many I'm afraid. It is one of those novels that truly is "hit or miss"
However... there was too much of this novel that just did not add up. For the sake of my readers, I'm going to try and break this down in a +/- sort of way.
+ The underlying "evil" that occurs throughout this story is original, and not something that I have seen before.
+/- With the exception of a few "dead" parts, the story moves fast enough that you keep reading to find out if your assumptions are correct (or maybe you're like me and can't put aside a story once you've started it, no matter what your feelings are).
- The characters are (for the most part) entirely way too one dimensional. With few exceptions, there is little to no back-story to explain why they act the way they do. Even those characters whose stories are eventually explained... it feels less like an explanation of their behavior as a character and more like the author saying "this is how I want to end it and this is why I will end it this way". For some of the characters, I felt this was too out of context and took away from the overall plot instead of being a "surprise" event.
Don't get me wrong, there were portions of this book that I liked, and portions that I didn't.. this book will appeal to some people, but not many I'm afraid. It is one of those novels that truly is "hit or miss"
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews