Your Shadow Half Remains

December 18, 2023
Moraine (Casting the Bones) sets this sharp, tension-filled psychological thriller in a world stricken by a strange and violent pandemic that is transmitted through eye contact and triggers the urge to kill both others and, eventually, oneself. Riley has been isolated in a house in the woods by a lake for so long that time has become fluid and her connection to reality is fading. At the start of the book, she encounters the first human she’s seen in who-knows-how-long: Ellis, who seems kind and well-intentioned, but may be hiding something sinister. The rules of the eye-contact-killing disease are at times hard to grasp, with the characters just as unclear on its mechanics as the reader (the failure of technology has caused a near-total disconnection between Riley, Ellis, and whatever’s left of the world, leaving them unaware of any discoveries or mutations that may have occurred). As the bite-size novel progresses, it becomes clear that Riley, too, cannot be trusted: her version of events hides the macabre truth of her past. The result is a freaky and masterfully constructed tale, whose strength most often comes from what Moraine leaves to the imagination. Read this one with the lights on.

June 1, 2024

Moraine's (Sword and Star) latest takes listeners on an emotional journey through human interactions in a postapocalyptic landscape. In this pandemic-ravaged world, simply looking into someone else's eyes triggers and ignites murderous rage and violence. Riley has been alone for a long time until she meets Ellis. She wants to get closer to him but is also cautious and distrustful, unable to trust her judgment as unexplained phenomena pile up. Moraine, a writer for podcasts including The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox, keeps a tight focus on Riley as she tries to discover how to engage with people when eye contact leads to certain disaster. However, that tight focus, combined with Riley's questionable reliability as a narrator, occasionally wears thin. Additionally, Riley's incomplete explanation of how the plague spreads might frustrate some listeners. Moraine's audiobook narration, with her pulling double duty as author and voice actor, does give Riley's character some emotional pathos despite her slippery nature. VERDICT Postapocalyptic stories like this and Josh Malerman's Bird Box often focus on what changes when society stops working. In this uneasy tale, Moraine suggests that what changes is how humans interact with one another.--James Gardner

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