First There Was Dread and Death
In 1967, the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, was terrorized by a winged creature stalking the night skies, along with a host of other bizarre and frightening paranormal phenomena. It all came to an end with the tragic collapse of the Silver Bridge on a cold December evening.
Then It Returned
Ken Orsulak survived the Silver Bridge disaster, only to awaken from his coma sixteen years later. A man out of time and confined to a wheelchair now, he’s taken back to his childhood home of Remington, Massachusetts. By day, the bucolic farming town is just as it was when he left in 1967. By night, shrieks, strange shadows and unexplainable lights send ripples of fear throughout its residents. Something sinister has descended on the town. Has the terror of Point Pleasant come for Ken?
Now All Hell Has Broken Loose
The creature has a name – Mothman. The high strangeness surrounding the monster defies explanation. Ken and the town fight for answers, then find themselves fighting for their lives. Enter John Keel, the stalwart reporter who made the mysterious cryptid infamous. Has he arrived just in time, or is he too late to save Remington from the unknowable intentions of the Mothman? Remington is coming apart at the seams. Will anyone be left standing when…and if…the Mothman’s reign of terror ends?
A cryptid tale of existential dread unlike any other. Shadow of the Mothman will pull you into a world of mythical beasts, UFO folklore, men in black, and ghostly visions. The nostalgia of the 80s is plunged into the mystifying world of In Search Of in this love letter to the beasts and enigmas that plague our nightmares.
First let's just gaze at that awesome cover!
This starts out with the popular incident that happened in the 60's that turned into what we all know as the Mothman Prophecies, and the main male character was 16 and survives but was in a comma for 16 years and now it's 1983 and Ken has missed a whole decade. He suddenly wakes up and all is very different, but he can't remember much of what happened from that day on the bridge.
Everything he remembers is through the eyes of a 16-year-old boy not a 30 something man. His girlfriend at 16 is now all grown up and a nurse that has been taking care of him, putting her life on hold for the young man she had loved. His mother has been by his side the whole time hoping for him to wake up and now that he is, they are going back home to Remington, the small town he grew up in. Oh, and he has been paralyzed from the accident on the bridge, so he has that to deal with.
Ken spends a lot of his days trying to figure out what this new world is like, he watches new shows, trying to get down the lingo and is amazed at everything around him, but also feels very awkward as he is an adult, but his mind is still 16.
Once back in Remington, it seems like some very strange things start to happen. Strange things being seen in the night sky, a winglike creature swooping down on people, animals being killed. Ken starts to remember thing from the bridge, he remembers at thing with red eyes and he is sure it's come back for him and is terrorizing the town. Is it there to harm or to warn?
I will start with the fact that I really didn't know a lot about the Mothman and so I guess my expectations where a little off as I thought this was going to be like other cryptid creatures and it would go through chomping on people, etc. and that is not at all what I got, so I guess I was a bit disappointed as that is what I come to expect from a Shea creature feature. Not to say that it wasn't an interesting story once I decided I wasn't getting what I wanted.
I thought some things were very strange, the fact that Cindy's love at 16 was so big that she became a nurse just to take care of Ken and still loved him. That is a powerful first love and kind of weird. There was a strange moment when Ken was crushing on a girl in her late teens, but you had to remember his mind was still feeling very much like a 16-year-old, but at least it didn't get to weird. The ending once it started came very fast and had a lot of action but was just different from what I had in my head. Oh, and also, there were animal deaths and I can handle most but not a dog. So you have been warned.
It also had a lot of fun and interesting side characters.
I think if you are a fan of Mothman and no more about this cryptid you might enjoy this one.
3.25 stars
