A Nineteen Eighties Puppet Fantasy Manifests in Real Life in The Shadow Glass

Josh Winning’s The Shadow Glass asks an enormous query on its cowl, which io9 is revealing right this moment (and you’ll see in full under): “What if it was all real?” The “it” on this case is a puppet fantasy world created by the principle character’s father—paying homage to The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The NeverEnding Story, and different beloved Nineteen Eighties tales.

But to protagonist Jack’s shock, the world of the movie—a infamous box-office bomb additionally titled The Shadow Glass—and its whimsical characters, together with the heroic fox on the middle of the story, are one way or the other…alive? And prepared for a second act that might assist restore Jack’s father’s legacy. Here’s a full description of the story, adopted by the duvet and an excerpt from the novel.

Jack Corman is failing at life.

Jobless, jaded and on the “wrong” aspect of thirty, he’s going through the specter of eviction from his London flat whereas reeling from the sudden demise of his father, one-time movie director Bob Corman. Back within the eighties, Bob poured his coronary heart and soul into the creation of his 1986 puppet fantasy The Shadow Glass, a movie Jack liked as a toddler, idolizing its fox-like hero Dune.

But The Shadow Glass flopped on launch, deemed too scary for teenagers and too bizarre for adults, and Bob turned a laughing inventory, dropping himself to booze and self-pity. Now, the movie represents every thing Jack hated about his father, and he lives with the concern that he’ll find yourself a failure identical to him.

In the wake of Bob’s demise, Jack returns to his decaying house, a spot creaking with film memorabilia and painful recollections. Then, throughout a freak thunderstorm, the puppets within the attic begin speaking. Tipped right into a determined real-world quest to avoid wasting London from the extra nefarious of his father’s creations, Jack groups up with excitable fanboy Toby and spiky studio govt Amelia to navigate the labyrinth of his father’s legacy whereas conjuring the hero inside—and igniting a Shadow Glass resurgence that might, lastly, do his father proud.

Here’s a have a look at the gorgeous cowl by Julia Lloyd, making its debut right here on io9, adopted by the unique excerpt.

The corridor was much more cluttered than he remembered.

Knick-knacks and keepsakes crowded the passage, giving the impression of a pokey vintage store. A grandfather clock stood surrounded by bone-dry potted crops, whereas Japanese Shadow Glass posters have been mounted on the partitions. A shelving unit groaned with VHS tapes, DVDs, a Walkman and a cassette tape library, and there have been books all over the place. Feathered with age and heaped amid swirling mud motes.

Jack’s neck creaked as he turned his head to take all of it in.

The curios have been acquainted but in addition totally different to how he remembered them, as if he have been viewing them by mottled glass. They appeared decayed. Relics from one other time. A life he had virtually forgotten he lived. And this was simply the corridor. From the place he stood, he glimpsed the rooms and passages past, wending in a disordered muddle, combining to kind a home of riddles. A spot by which to get misplaced.

He stilled, frowning on the distant level the place the again corridor was the kitchen. He was positive he’d seen motion there. He pictured his father nonetheless roaming Kettu House, tall and slender as a telegraph pole, shuffling in slippers and a moth-eaten cardigan, fingers scratching his beard. He might nonetheless hear the whispers of a person who had lengthy since relinquished his grip on actuality.

‘In a forgotten time, in a forgotten world, deep within a forgotten chamber few have ever seen, the Shadow Glass sees all.’

Jack gritted his tooth and shook off the picture. That was years in the past. Bob was lifeless and the home was empty—of something residing, at the very least. He couldn’t get distracted.

Aiming for the rickety staircase, he went additional inside, his fingers tapping one of many bottles in a drinks cupboard. The sight stirred recollections of Bob handed out within the armchair in his research, the pall of stale breath hanging over the room, and though Jack wasn’t a drinker, his mouth felt parched. He uncapped the bottle, taking a swig as he began up the steps. The whiskey seared the again of his throat.

‘Jesu—’ he coughed, then froze as a shadow crossed the wall.

He didn’t transfer.

He’d solely caught it out of the nook of his eye, however he was sure it had reared up from the skirting board and flashed throughout the wallpaper.

Stiffly, he listened, sensing eyes on him.

Ch-ch-ch-ch…

Jack’s arm hair bristled and his gaze snapped to the ceiling. He had heard one thing above him. A skittering of claws on floorboards.

‘Hello?’ he referred to as.

The home swallowed his voice. He wasn’t positive he had even spoken.

Ch-ch-ch-ch…

Apprehension pinched Jack’s chest. He’d undoubtedly heard it that point. A scratching above his head.

Somebody was up there.

More fanboys, perhaps, come to choose over the stays of his father’s empire.

Maybe they have been already within the attic claiming the factor he’d pinned his total future on.

Adrenaline flooded his veins and Jack battled his manner down a touchdown cluttered with Shadow Glass props; framed film cells and pretend, otherworldly crops that tangled between his ft. Above his head, the scratching continued and Jack clambered up one other, even narrower set of stairs that shrieked as he climbed.

He got here to a cease exterior the attic door.

Of course the sound was coming from there.

Above the rasp of his personal wheezing, he heard it louder than earlier than: a scraping like nails on the within of a coffin. His throat thickened with concern.

For a second, he was fifteen once more, crouched within the stairwell whereas his father informed him to return to mattress. Jack had woken within the night time and adopted voices as much as the attic. He’d listened by the door as they echoed at midnight, and he couldn’t inform if Bob was in there watching a film, or if Bob was making the voices himself. Maybe the newspapers and magazines had been proper. ‘Bonkers Bob’ actually had misplaced his thoughts.

Crouched exterior the attic now, twenty years later, Jack felt darkness greedy at his neck.

Was his father nonetheless in there?

He ought to run. Get out of there earlier than it was too late.

No. He shook off the reminiscence. This wasn’t some teenage fantasy. Somebody had damaged in. They may very well be making off with the very factor he was there to assert for himself.

He took the envelope from his pocket, eliminated the important thing and floor it into the lock. Throwing open the door, he charged inside and––

Tripped.

His toe caught one thing at midnight and he misplaced his footing. He crashed forwards, placing the ground painfully as he crumpled onto his entrance. Somehow, he managed to forestall his head cracking in opposition to the floorboards, and located himself observing a pair of knobbly claws resting on the ground in entrance of him.

He clutched the miraculously intact whiskey bottle and craned his neck up on the factor looming over him.

An amphibian creature with boil-pocked inexperienced pores and skin leered within the gloom. It was squat and slimy-looking, its too-wide mouth hanging open to disclose glimmering rows of needle-sharp tooth. Its bulbous eyes have been heavy-lidded, vacant and staring, and whereas it appeared like one thing that had slithered out of a swamp, it wore mechanised armour, the type of sci-fi tech that appeared purpose-built for deep area.

Jack’s coronary heart slammed the floorboards as he recognised the character.

A skalion.

Excerpt from The Shadow Glass by Josh Winning reprinted by permission. Copyright Titan Books.

Josh Winning’s The Shadow Glass is out March 22, 2022, however you possibly can pre-order a replica here.

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