Toxic Shadows

by Tim Curran

Cut River, Michigan. 0. The town the Devil built. Once it was a sleepy backwater town and once there were people in it. Then a lurking pestilence ate the flesh from its bones. A pestilence born in the smoldering graveyards of nameless, forgotten battlefields. And now there is only a shifting darkness in Cut River, a darkness populated by hideous shadows that pretend to be people. Seven strangers will arrive. If they can stay alive until dawn, they'll survive. But to do that will mean engaging in a bloody war of attrition against the things that crawl and hunt in the night, things that wear the faces of men, women, and children…but are in fact Toxic Shadows. Welcome to Cut River. Welcome to the graveyard. War is Hell.

Genres: Horror, Zombies

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Tim Curran lives in Michigan and is the author of the novels Skin Medicine, Hive, Dead Sea, Resurrection, The Devil Next Door, and Biohazard, as well as the novella The Corpse King. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as City Slab, Flesh&Blood, Book of Dark Wisdom, and Inhuman, and anthologies such as Shivers IV, High Seas Cthulhu, and Vile Things.

For DarkFuse and its imprints, he has written the bestselling The Underdwelling, the Readers Choice-Nominated novella Fear Me, Puppet Graveyard as well as Long Black Coffin.

Find him on the web at: www.corpseking.com.

Reviews

[Kenneth McKinley · Rating 4 out of 5]

What was Tim Curran's first horror novel that he ever wrote also turned out to be my first exposure to his writing and I have to say that I'm impressed. Toxic Shadows is a hodgepodge of many things. Dawn of the Dead meets 30 Days of Night meets The Crazies meets Rambo. And even though this all sounds like familiar territory, Curran makes it his own. He uses an interesting setting in the fictional small town of Cut River set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Other than Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, you don't see this location used in stories and it works to create a growing dreaded feeling of isolationism that builds during the story. Although he could have used any small town in the Midwest and made it work, Cut River has that familiar feeling of someplace that you've been to before. That same familiar feeling applies to the diverse band of characters that find themselves trapped in this nightmarish hellhole. You have the overweight traveling salesman, the jealous, overbearing housewife, her doormat of a husband, the recluse Vietnam vet who is still reliving the war and mistrusts the government, the Paul Bunyan-sized ex-motorcycle gang member, his run-off-at-the mouth, ditzy blonde girlfriend, and the rocker chick with a heroin addiction. While they could've been stereotypical cardboard cut outs of their caricatures, Curran develops them nicely. Even the characters that I didn't like when I was first introduced to them, I found myself feeling sympathetic with them as the story rolled along. For me, that's good character development and keeps me wanting to continue turning the pages. Mix in lots of action and blood, even better. For being his first stab at horror, Curran proves that he's no one-trick pony and can deliver the goods. I look forward to reading more from him.

4 out of 5 stars


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[Jim Lay · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded up because Curran is always awesome even for this first novel.

[ᴥ Irena ᴥ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

If I played a drinking game counting bodies, I would be in a coma now. Or dead. I stopped paying attention to the dead (moving or not) at some point in the story.
To be fair, the author warns you of inconsistencies and weaknesses in Preface. And there are quite a few, but I don't want to hold them against the book.

The whole book takes place in one night. A group of people find themselves in Cut River fighting for their lives. It's not surprising they team up at one point of the story. It's a small town.
There isn't much to say about the plot really. There is a lot of running and fighting, blood and gore. I have a feeling Tim Curran made a list of all the things that may disturb and disgust a person and put them in this book. I found some too much but the impact they had is undeniably strong. Horrible, but still strong. I find children of any age disturbing in this context.
The characters are mostly stereotypes, but they work well in this setting. You have your drug addict rock star, a mountain of a man biker and his girlfriend, a married couple, a salesman and a Vietnam veteran. The vet is one of the reasons I am not rating this lower. Even though he is this supposedly crazy paranoid former soldier, who blames the government for pretty much everything, I loved his character. There is a part of the book where he remembers a mission in Vietnam. That made this book better too.

I didn't like any of the women here. Whether it was intentional or not, they came out as either a weak and pathetic addict, a judgemental woman who insults his husband and everyone around her or a supposed 'airhead' who talk too much.

I would have liked this more if not for the last fighting scene. It was ridiculous. Flying human trunks? Really?

On the whole, I liked it.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apparently Tim Curran wrote this book back in the early 2000s but the release was limited. He puts a disclaimer at the beginning, describing how when he wrote it, the zombie craze wasn't yet shambling along at it's current gait.

I don't think he needed to warn us. This is an above-average toxic zombie tale and I found myself ducking and weaving along with it's many thrills and chills. The group of survivors here are a colorful bunch, including a Vietnam vet, a heroine-addicted rocker, a pussy-whipped average joe and his wife, and an armed-to-the-teeth biker and his hot little old lady, and these folks get put through the wringer.

One of the highlights is a prolonged Vietnam War flashback with a horrific twist. After I read that part I put Curran's "Headhunter" on my list, wanting some more of the same.

It's not without it's plot problems, not to mention numerous type-o's, but Toxic Shadows is a nasty midnight thrill. I give it a zombie boner way up in the air, baby. I salute you, Tim Curran, you sick fuck.

[Lynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, amazing! Tim Curran knows how to tell a cracking story and this is yet another example. Also, what a fantastic book cover. Loved it.

[Kaisersoze · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tim Curran himself acknowledges this re-release of a very early work as one of his worst ... and he's not wrong. Though all of the typical Curran elements are present - the descriptive prose, the intense gore, the depraved villains - these are offset by some inconsistent character work, plot threads that go nowhere, and an ending which is so sudden as to cause whiplash. There was also some switching between limited character and omnipotent narrator perspectives which took me out of the tale. And who, when telling a story from 30 years before, recalls every word said?

To be fair though, Curran might want to have a word with Garth Ennis about his Crossed comic series, because the similarities are many.

2.5 (Rounding up to 3) Yellow Eyed Gazes for Toxic Shadows.

[Lisa Sandberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

A 3.5 star rating for this one. Don't get me wrong, I liked the book and the characters, and the fact that the zombie outbreak is only in a small town, with some outsiders falling into the hell of it all. And the ending was pretty good. I just think I have been reading too many zombie books lately.

This was my first time reading a book by Tim Curran, and I have several more I will be reading by him. I feel he is an excellent writer.

[Thomas Hobbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

A toxin created for Vietnam was unleashed into a small town in Michigan and the survivor's must fight to survive a town of rabid humans. Pure adrenaline throughout.

[Andres · Rating 4 out of 5]

Balls to the wall zombie action!

I've only been a fan of author Tim Curran's work for a short time and all I can say is that he, just like your favorite chinese restaurant, always delivers. Toxic Shadows being an early work of Currans makes it all the better. Raw and unflinching, it layed down the groundwork for this authors knack of intense action scenes intermingled with blood chilling horror.

The story throws together a motley crew of characters and puts them through the wringer dropping them into small town zombie hell as they try to escape from the clutches of the infected. There really is a great mix of the classic Romero-Matheson shambling undead but also throw in some 28 Days Later and just enough of James Herbert's The Fog, another favorite of mine and you kind of get an idea. Big bonus here is the Vietnam flashback, holy shit!

[Jamie Eastman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Waste

I can't believe I just wasted my time reading this, it's too bad, it started off pretty decent but seriously not going to lie the ending pretty much killed it for me.

[Joe Geesin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book, but it took a while for anything to happen and the lengthy mid-book Vietnam monologue was a little detracting.