Esbat Review: “The Man With No Shadow” by Bonnie Quinn
The Man With No Shadow
Bonnie Quinn
Kate is a campground manager. All she wants is for her campground guests to have a good, safe time while on her land. She doesn’t want campers dying from dehydration, or because they ate the wrong food, or drank from the skull cup, or spoke to the man with no shadow. Kate’s land is old land, and it’s down to her to keep the unusual residents in check, even when she gets resistance from them and the town itself. Not to mention the man with no shadow seems to have something up his sleeve.
The Man With No Shadow is part of Bonnie Quinn’s How to Survive Camping series, adapted from a series of r/nosleep posts, largely unaltered except for minor tweaks for readability. This book was an absolute delight to read. Kate’s voice is so strong, you get swept up in it, and Quinn very cleverly lays down hints towards the larger plot early on.
It’s fun to see Kate responding to Reddit, and it’s easy to imagine the posts on r/nosleep, people speculating on exactly what is going on with one character, and, err, shipping Kate with a particular campground denizen…
And this is the main thing for this book – it’s dark, and creepy, but it’s hell of a lot of fun. Though it’s set in a campground with just a small town next door, there’s a sense of Urban Fantasy here (what is ‘Urban’ Fantasy outside the ‘Urban’? Rural Fantasy?) with the various inhabitants that live on the old land. Kate has to contend with gods, demons, fae, and the odd saint, and she has her work cut out for her.
Again, this book was a lot of fun. Kate’s voice comes through really well, and it’s worth both reading this book and checking out The NoSleep Podcast’s ‘Goat Valley Campgrounds’, adapted from Quinn’s book. The adaptation is great, with further tweaks made to the story, and it still feels fresh even if you’ve read the book, or if you listen then read.
Bonnie Quinn has done an excellent job with this, and I’m looking forward to checking out book two.
Esbat: A Bookish Podcast is a bi-weekly podcast discussing SFF & Horror books by diverse writers. Every two weeks, we bring you discussions with fantastic guests about the books they want to highlight. In our latest episode we talk about The Man With No Shadow with Hannah Selector. You can find out more on our Esbat Podcast (https://divinationhollow.com/esbat-bookish-podcast) page.
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08B4Z495G/
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Man-Shadow-Survive-Camping-Book-ebook/dp/B08B4Z495G/
Review by Elle Turpitt
Twitter & Instagram: @elleturpitt
I purchased this book.