Shadow of the Antlered BirdBy David Sklar
Published by Drollerie Press
Who DOESN’T want to read a book about a guy being hunted by his own shadow? You’re thinking -“Sweet, this is going to be one creepy book!” Imagine your surprise when you find it is written entirely in present tense with a literary quality about as far removed from conventional fantasy novels as you can get.
This is no easy feat for a writer on the best of days. David Sklar assembles a one hundred and sixty two page novel that pulls the reader into a dreamlike world encompassing parts of real life California, New York City and a whack of other places in between. How does he do it? Beats the heck out of me! (God, nothing worse than writer envy...)
There’s a rhythmic, almost hypnotic cadence to Sklar's storytelling (and I think it’s got everything to do with present tense) that drives what is really a simple story about being on the run and growing up. Oh, and there’s the business about this nasty shadow who wants you out of the picture: Where should you run? Moreover, how do you stop a shadow bent on ending you?
The main characters are friends Tam and April – and guess which of the two is a human/elf half breed being chased all over hell’s half-acre by the aforementioned mean-ass shadow with a knot in its face? Well, I’m not going to tell you because I’m in therapy over the hideous birth sequence where the shadow rips apart its mother in the most graphic way imaginable. How graphic? Well, if you’re contemplating becoming a mother, skip that page. Trust me on this.
There’s magic. There’s a hunt. There’s the timeless quality of those classic fantasy elements blended into modern America in a way that I’ve not seen in other urban fantasy novels. (The last genre-fiction novel I’d read that came close to being literary fiction was Robert R. McCammon’s beautifully written, “Boy’s Life”.)
Very simply, David Sklar has transformed an urban fantasy story into literary fiction, it’s that well written. It’s also a very surprising book that could easily fall into the realm of speculative fiction, except that Sklar's writing is so strong, his settings so crisp - it's hard to call this novel urban fantasy when the market is flooded with books about vampires, wizards, shapeshifters and necromancers. It is urban fantasy, and it isn't. It is speculative fiction, but it's not. If anything, Sklar morphed his book into performance art (not the WTF kind, either) and then morphed it into something that reminds me of how Leonard Cohen grabs you by the brain and forces you to ponder the meaning of his poems, or the lyrical quality of his songs. Sklar bends the formulaic rules we generally associate with fantasy books – some of the chapters are only a couple of paragraphs in length!
Because of this, it’s a solid read that you really must pay attention to at the very beginning because the first handful of pages establish the fantasy elements which are carried throughout the book.
Overall, this is a very well-written book that defies the cookie cutter approach we find in most genre-fiction novels. David Sklar is a gifted writer who isn’t afraid to take the rules, kick them to the curb and invent his own. Five out of five stars f0r daring to be different!
