Ebook606 pages8 hours
The Shapeshifters: A Novel
By Stefan Spjut
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this ebook
This tale of missing children and mythic monsters is “a fantastic novel in every sense of the word” (Karl Ove Knausgård).
Summer 1978. A young boy disappears without a trace from a summer cabin. His mother claims he was carried away by a giant. He is never found.
Twenty-five years later, another child goes missing. This time there’s a lead, a single photograph taken by Susso Myrén. She’s devoted her life to the search for trolls, legendary giants known as stallo who can control human thoughts and assume animal form. Convinced that the fabled beasts are real, she follows the trail of missing children to northern Sweden. But humans, some part stallo themselves, have been watching over the creatures for generations, and this hidden society of protectors won’t hesitate to close its deadly ranks.
Mixing folklore and history, suspense and the supernatural, The Shapeshifters is an extraordinary journey into a frozen land where myth bleeds into reality.
“Spjut has accomplished the masterstroke of writing convincingly about the existence of trolls and other mythical creatures in the Nordic forests . . . all this unfolds in a language that captures the everyday reality we know so well, with such precision and exquisite style that the words seem to sparkle on the page.” —Karl Ove Knausgård, author of My Struggle
“A fun, cunning crime thriller . . . If you enjoy the novels of Michael Koryta or Tana French’s The Secret Place . . . you might eat up The Shapeshifters.” —Chicago Tribune
“Spjut turns Scandinavian mythology upside down in a shades-of-gray world built for lovers of fantastical suspense.” —Publishers Weekly
Summer 1978. A young boy disappears without a trace from a summer cabin. His mother claims he was carried away by a giant. He is never found.
Twenty-five years later, another child goes missing. This time there’s a lead, a single photograph taken by Susso Myrén. She’s devoted her life to the search for trolls, legendary giants known as stallo who can control human thoughts and assume animal form. Convinced that the fabled beasts are real, she follows the trail of missing children to northern Sweden. But humans, some part stallo themselves, have been watching over the creatures for generations, and this hidden society of protectors won’t hesitate to close its deadly ranks.
Mixing folklore and history, suspense and the supernatural, The Shapeshifters is an extraordinary journey into a frozen land where myth bleeds into reality.
“Spjut has accomplished the masterstroke of writing convincingly about the existence of trolls and other mythical creatures in the Nordic forests . . . all this unfolds in a language that captures the everyday reality we know so well, with such precision and exquisite style that the words seem to sparkle on the page.” —Karl Ove Knausgård, author of My Struggle
“A fun, cunning crime thriller . . . If you enjoy the novels of Michael Koryta or Tana French’s The Secret Place . . . you might eat up The Shapeshifters.” —Chicago Tribune
“Spjut turns Scandinavian mythology upside down in a shades-of-gray world built for lovers of fantastical suspense.” —Publishers Weekly
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Reviews for The Shapeshifters
Rating: 3.4999999340425534 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
47 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Exciting, suspenseful, typically Swedish-bleak (it's a translation), will read more by this guy
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5My favorite genre for the last decade has been urban fantasy; shifters, vampires, demons, witches, the fae, etc, etc. And some of them involve what is considered more mythological creatures. But I’m embarrassed to say that I had to force myself to get 25% thru this book before giving up. I just can’t get into the story and find I could care less about the characters, who until this point at least, are incredibly stoic and don’t exhibit emotions. Is this a cultural thing or just the way this author writes? I feel like I’m reading about stick figures.The very first chapter with the first child disappearing feels like a very clinical read with 31 pages of just-the-facts. After that we jump to the present where the majority of the story—at least until the point I stopped reading—is told from 2 characters points of view. One is a woman who is looking for proof that mythological creatures exist; she refers to them as trolls. And the other by a man, or is he a teen? We haven’t been told. His family(?) lives in total fear and do what they can to placate the creatures that live on their property. It’s a very choppy read as we jump back and forth between characters, and the information we’re provided is often sketchy with reveals provided in a future scene. I had to go back and read prior scenes just to make sense of things.This is set in Sweden and was translated to English. The author is very good at providing detailed descriptions on a lot of stuff, but there are food and items that are just foreign to me and I don’t always know what he’s talking about.I understand after I gave up reading this and looked at others’ review that there are some pretty gruesome scenes. With the detail of description the author has exhibited so far, I can believe he’d make the reader see it, provided he’s able to invoke the emotions that will also let them feel it.This writing style and format is just not something I’m enjoying.Read from an ARC via Amazon Vine Voice
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tolkien has been crap for trolls. Ever since Lord of the Rings, the prevailing image of trolls in fantastic literature are of club wielding, barely sentient hulks, the brutest force of any orcish horde. Preferably on a leash.But in Nordic folklore, trolls are more like a cruder, ruder, occasionally uglier and definetely less etherical relative of the fair folk. Forest dwellers, glaring at the lonely human cottages from among the dark trees, makers of hard, sometimes rigged, bargains, gold hoarders, child swappers, masters of disguise, possible to get along with but always unpredictable and dangerous. I’ve always felt they’ve deserved a place of their own, dreaming of a really well crafted contemporary horror story using the potential in them. Now I’ve read it. The variety in focus here though are the title’s Stallo, which are the sami folklore version of trolls. Bigger, lumbering, slow witted, with motives incomprehensible, with a taste for human flesh, and an eerie fascination with human children. Indeed, the atmospheric and creepy beginning deals with the abduction of a child from a summer cabin. It has a pitch perfect description of the sinister side of the deep Swedish forest, and leaves me literally breathless. Right from the start, Stallo is totally impossible to put down.The main story line takes place twenty five years later, when Susso, a firm believer in trolls since her grandfather the famous photographer caught something unexplainable on a flight photo, follows up on an eyewitness account. The old lady’s story about a silent, grinning little man seems somewhat believable, at least enough for Susso to rig the automatic camera. Perhaps this is the time she’ll finally catch something substantial? Just a few days later the lady calls her back. Her grandson is missing.What follows is a wobbly quest full of enigmas, which even turns out to involve some rather prominent people from Sweden’s past. The writing is dirty, smelly and real, and the whole concept of trolls hiding in remote houses with terrified people trying to deal with them, comes across as believable.In the end, a lot is left hanging. Few things are fully answered. The motives of the stallo and their wardens, the skrymt and knytt and shape-shifters, remain mysterious. Which I kind of like. But one or two of the big storylines seem more sloppily dropped than carefully left dangling. It’s a bit of a shame, especially in a book so thick and detailed. Could be a sequel is coming, even though I haven’t seen any indication yet. With that said, it’s been a long time since I turned pages so hungrily, and many images here will stay with me for a long long time. Translation on it’s way, I think.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is one of the those novels that manages to explain what is happening and why, but is scary. It takes a talented writer who can manage this - write something, be explicit with what is happening, but still capture just how unknowable the Stallo is.I'd say more, but this is a book that you need to read. How the story unfolds is just as important as how it ends.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great little supernatural thriller, read a hundred pages at a time.
Book preview
The Shapeshifters - Stefan Spjut
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