Audiobook Review: Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine
Genre: Horror
Age: Adult
Format: Audiobook
There is something special about listening to an audiobook narrated by the author. As a listener, and author myself, I feel like an author-reading brings the characters and story to life in a way that most accurately translates the story as it existed inside the author’s mind. I therefore really enjoyed the narration of this audiobook.
Your Shadow Half Remains has a similar premise to Bird Box, except that instead of some cosmic, extrinsic threat, the danger is very much a human one. In this world, a horrific pandemic has brought society to the brink, where a penchant for extreme violence can be communicated by merely a glance.
The result? No more close contact with others, and definitely no eye contact. While the author does mention how this situation causes the fetishization of Blind people and isn’t all that uncomfortable or difficult for autistic people who prefer not to make eye contact anyway, I think this aspect of the world-building could’ve been a given a bit more page time, especially since the MC’s ex was autistic. I think exploring how our MC, Riley, navigated the pandemic with a partner who preferred the new social norm of no eye contact could’ve made for an equally fascinating and highly nuanced story.
Instead, this novella tells the story of Riley’s interaction with her new neighbor, Ellis, and how her tenuous grip on reality begins to slip through a series of increasingly weird encounters with crows and some unsettling instances of self-sabotage. Riley is the definitive unreliable narrator and the author does well to gradually show the errors in Riley’s perception of reality using flashbacks, dreams, and sequences of OCD-like intrusive thoughts.
I enjoyed the descriptive prose and the self-deprecating attitude of our MC as she struggled to navigate her simultaneous fear of and need for contact and connection with others. I found Ellis a little bland though, and I wish there had been a bit more time dedicated to a more thorough exploration of his character. This is another novella I do think could’ve done with another 10k words or so to fully flesh out its ideas and themes.
The book, while brief, is still deeply unsettling and disturbing, achieving the horror-vibe less with gore and more with a visceral sense of dread as Riley struggles to understand who, or what, the real threat to her safety—and sanity—might be.
Purchase at Tor
(links to other sites are included)
Review By Xan van Rooyen
