Shadowbahn

By: Steve Erickson

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

When the Twin Towers suddenly reappear in the badlands of South Dakota 20 years after their fall, nobody can explain their return. To the hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands drawn to the "American Stonehenge" - including Parker and Zema, siblings on their way from Los Angeles to visit their mother in Michigan - the Towers seem to sing, even as everybody hears a different song. A rumor overtakes the throng that someone can be seen in the high windows of the southern structure.

On the 93rd floor, Jesse Presley - the stillborn twin of the most famous singer who ever lived - suddenly awakes, driven mad over the hours and days to come by a voice in his head that sounds like his but isn't, and by the memory of a country where he survived in his brother's place. Meanwhile, Parker and Zema cross a possessed landscape by a mysterious detour no one knows, charted on a map that no one has seen.

Haunting, audacious, and undaunted, Shadowbahn is a winding and reckless ride through intersections of danger, destiny, and the conjoined halves of a ruptured nation.

©2017 Steve Erickson (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

I wanted to like this...

With the premise of the appearing twin towers and the connection to Elvis. I really wanted to like it. The description drew me in but it was just so random and disjointed. Although I pushed through, it was a huge disappointment.

I couldn't finish it...

I wanted so desperately to finish this book and find out what was going on with the overarching plotline, but I couldn't get over the droning lists of song titles. I appreciate the songs as metaphors and storytelling tools in themselves, but this was done WAY too much for my liking. I lost interest and even fast-forwarded a few times in hopes it was a passing faze of the book.
Perhaps I will try to read the physical book so I can easily skim some of the extensive playlists that gum-up the flow of the story. Know that this book does not do well in audio format (though the performer does a nice job, despite the content).
This is a book meant to be read, not listened-to.

Incomprehensible

This book had me asking the whole time, "what am I missing?" I believe that if I had some hints or clues at the beginning to Erickson's hidden narrative I could better appreciate it. As it is I was left feeling dense and ignorant, which a good book should take you away from and not cause.

Complicated & Compelling

An extraordinary journey through space & time & the history of 20th century American music and all the unnamed composers and performers who give voice to things we cannot express or perhaps even understand - but which matter deeply & compel us to keep searching.