Shadows Fall, by Simon R. Green: In Which I Judge a Book by Its Cover

Generally speaking, we’re not supposed to do that; judge the book by its boards. I’m going to indulge in some comments and conjecture about this one, though. I haven’t read the book yet and won’t for a while; Spouse gets it first. First of all, some perspective. I found the book at Mockingbird Used Books, and I bought it. However much I may make fun of it here, I paid cash money to bring it home, based on our enjoyment of other Simon Green works.

Spouse calls Green’s Deathstalker Series “good clean kill-everybody fun.” I enjoyed the Nightside stories, even if they did get repetitive toward the end. We both liked his dark fantasy-comedy Blue Moon, and both liked the Hawk and Fisher stories (although the rather sudden origin story about who Hawk and Fisher used to be was patently unbelievable). Green comes out of the fine British tradition where heroes can be brave but not smart; villains can be selfish but courageous; bureaucrats are obstructive but not stupid. Women can have aspirations, dreams and faults, and power a plot just as well as a man. Fun stuff.

I had not seen the book Shadows Fall before, but I had read the name. Shadows Fall is one the territories referenced in the Nightside series. Nightside is the part of  London where it is always 3:00 AM. Shadows Fall was the kingdom where dreams went to die. I don’t remember any Nightside story set in Shadows Fall, but I think our band of heroes cut through it in one book, on their way somewhere else, kind of like jumping the neighbor’s fence and cornering their yard. As I recall, this didn’t go well in the book either.

But here is a whole novel based on Shadows Fall. It is a trade paperback with an android cover, done in shades of cerulean blue, silver and tan. The typeface is a thick, solid serif font with a shadow (well, of course). It looks… authoritative.

There is a blurb on the cover; one blurb. “I think it’s the best book I’ve ever written” — Simon R. Green. Simon R Green? Dude, you blurbed your own book?

Inside, on the first page, is a comment by Locus Magazine:  “A memorable effort with some brilliant moments. The finale is epic.” Really? Ouch.

The book was published in 2005 by BenBella  Books, and distributed by Perseus Press. I haven’t heard of either of them. Ah, some things are coming into focus now.

Looking inside once again I see that Green’s copyright is 1994, although the first publication date is 2005. By 2005, Green was well established with the Deathstalker tales. Was Shadows Fall a one-off? Was he unsuccessful in getting a book this quirky (fantasy, when he was selling SF?) with his regular publisher?  That seems possible. And 1994… this could one of those books you write first, and usually never publish. In my youth, we used to say it was the manuscript “in the bottom drawer.” By the 90s we probably would have said, “languishing on the hard drive.”

Another thing is clear when I look at the list of characters Green nicely provides at the front of the book; some residents of Shadows Fall moved to Nightside, once that series got started. And why not? I’ve said for years that in addition to being an epic work, Sandman is also Neil Gaiman’s personal treasure archive, where he stored every trope, symbol, allusion and notion he would ever use again; and he just stops by there and picks things up as he needs them. There is nothing wrong with that; it’s your own work. There is nothing wrong with luring the fine citizens of Shadows Fall over to the place where it’s always 3:00 AM with the promise of better wages and original Coca-Cola.

Anyway. Over at Amazon, of the 32 people who wrote reviews, 26 gave it 4 stars or better. Many of the them hate the ending (that epic finale), but loved the world and found it genuinely original. This was before Green started colonizing it heavily for Nightside, I think. People love his witty dialogue and his broad cast of characters.

When all is said and done, we will probably like it. Even if he blurbed it himself.