sonofthe's review against another edition
4.0
Emma Bull describes this series as fan-fiction for a made-up TV show. That's about right.
This book contains the first four cases and a few extra character building scenes. It's easy to see why people compare this to the X-Files, but it doesn't seem derivative. There's a cast of eight or nine protagonists, sometimes too many for me to keep track of, and they slowly get built over the course of the episodes. The cases themselves aren't really set up as elaborate mysteries, they feel more like the mysteries you run into in various TV shows. Shadow Unit, though, goes past television with the characters.
These are fast, easy reads. I'll pick up other volumes to fill in my light reading times.
This book contains the first four cases and a few extra character building scenes. It's easy to see why people compare this to the X-Files, but it doesn't seem derivative. There's a cast of eight or nine protagonists, sometimes too many for me to keep track of, and they slowly get built over the course of the episodes. The cases themselves aren't really set up as elaborate mysteries, they feel more like the mysteries you run into in various TV shows. Shadow Unit, though, goes past television with the characters.
These are fast, easy reads. I'll pick up other volumes to fill in my light reading times.
trike's review
1.0
Emma Bull! Wil Shetterly! Elizabeth Bear!
Write boring-ass fan fiction based on Criminal Minds!
Seriously, for all their jibber-jabber about this TV series and that TV series and how they're writing stories based on an imaginary new TV series they really want to see, this is just crappy Criminal Minds fanwank. All the characters from that show are here; basically what they've done is change their race or gender... or in the case of Penelope Garcia, her weight. (No fatties in Fantasy!)
The hook for me was that this was going to be a Fantasy (or perhaps Science Fictional) version of a police procedural. It's not. The Fantasy elements (and that's what they ultimately are) are minimal at best. Just an excuse for people to kill other people so theCriminal Minds team can walk around saying cryptic bullshit. Using the show as a jumping-off point is fine, but you have to do it *better*, not worse.
I wouldn't be so mad about this if these guys weren't (normally) so good at what they do. This is exactly like Robert Towne faffing off and writing Days of Thunder, that shitty NASCAR movie starring Tom Cruise. Except in that case at least Towne got paid millions of dollars to turn in a bog-standard 3rd act that any monkey could've written. I literally have no idea what the motivation for this thing was.
If you want to practice your writing by taking an existing TV series and trying to emulate its tone and style, that's a good idea. As a writing EXERCISE. You then delete it from your computer and write something good. You don't sell it to people. Life's too short to waste it reading fanfic.
Write boring-ass fan fiction based on Criminal Minds!
Seriously, for all their jibber-jabber about this TV series and that TV series and how they're writing stories based on an imaginary new TV series they really want to see, this is just crappy Criminal Minds fanwank. All the characters from that show are here; basically what they've done is change their race or gender... or in the case of Penelope Garcia, her weight. (No fatties in Fantasy!)
The hook for me was that this was going to be a Fantasy (or perhaps Science Fictional) version of a police procedural. It's not. The Fantasy elements (and that's what they ultimately are) are minimal at best. Just an excuse for people to kill other people so the
I wouldn't be so mad about this if these guys weren't (normally) so good at what they do. This is exactly like Robert Towne faffing off and writing Days of Thunder, that shitty NASCAR movie starring Tom Cruise. Except in that case at least Towne got paid millions of dollars to turn in a bog-standard 3rd act that any monkey could've written. I literally have no idea what the motivation for this thing was.
If you want to practice your writing by taking an existing TV series and trying to emulate its tone and style, that's a good idea. As a writing EXERCISE. You then delete it from your computer and write something good. You don't sell it to people. Life's too short to waste it reading fanfic.
danibeliveau's review
2.0
I bought this ebook for $0.99. You get what you pay for.
The concept is interesting and familiar: an FBI task force assigned to entities called "anomalies," a type of supernatural possession causing people to commit crimes, mostly murder.
Sarah Monette and Will Shetterly saved this from being a one-star experience. I love everything Sarah has written - it was what brought me to this book - and Will's writing was a pleasant surprise, though that might have been because the other parts of the story were so difficult to get through. Slogging through Emma Bull and Elizabeth Bear's clumsy prose and lifeless, stereotypical characters, I was ready to abandon this book before I got to Sarah's section, which was itself enjoyable, but ultimately not worth the frustration.
I'm willing to concede that things probably got lost in translation when story was put into ebook form, but that doesn't motivate me to want to read any more of it. If it hadn't been so cheap, I would want my money back.
The concept is interesting and familiar: an FBI task force assigned to entities called "anomalies," a type of supernatural possession causing people to commit crimes, mostly murder.
Sarah Monette and Will Shetterly saved this from being a one-star experience. I love everything Sarah has written - it was what brought me to this book - and Will's writing was a pleasant surprise, though that might have been because the other parts of the story were so difficult to get through. Slogging through Emma Bull and Elizabeth Bear's clumsy prose and lifeless, stereotypical characters, I was ready to abandon this book before I got to Sarah's section, which was itself enjoyable, but ultimately not worth the frustration.
I'm willing to concede that things probably got lost in translation when story was put into ebook form, but that doesn't motivate me to want to read any more of it. If it hadn't been so cheap, I would want my money back.
mindsplinters's review
3.0
Clever conceit. Talented writers. A world that has good internal logic. Too short.
cj_jones's review against another edition
4.0
This is a collaborative effort, a collection of authors writing fan fiction for a TV show that doesn't exist. It's sort of X-Files meets Hannibal, with the weird science, the profiling, the character reflection and exploration, and the violent imagery. I got involved with this back when it was a web page and some LiveJournal pages. (Yes, that long ago.) Now there are 15 volumes, and in the UK they're bundled. There are short stories and also vignettes only a page or three long that serve as character exploration. A lot of Shadow Unit is as much about the agents as it is about the bad guys they're trying to catch, which makes it different from most X-Filesy fiction that I've read which tend to use shorthand to tell us 'this character is like this archetype/character'.
ifitaintkate's review against another edition
5.0
I'm mostly reading through on their site, but I'll mark the books finished as I pass them. My only complaint is that sometimes they seem to solve the cases absurdly quickly. Since that's literally my only complaint, 5 stars.
andrewfontenelle's review against another edition
3.0
This is an interesting collection of novellas. Written like a television drama series, the stories which make up "The Shadow Unit 1" read very much like a cross between the X-Files, Special Unit 2 and Black in Man. The Shadow Unit is a part of the FBI which investigates crimes committed by people with unusual powers.
The various characters portrayed and the human interactions are quiet well developed. It should be interesting to see how the other books in the series develop.
The various characters portrayed and the human interactions are quiet well developed. It should be interesting to see how the other books in the series develop.
cindywho's review
3.0
Shadow unit is a made-up crime/horror television show written by various authors just for fun. I enjoyed some of the character building (while some of the characters were still unformed for me by the end of the season) and the adventures. The "season finale" went a bit too far into torture porn for my sensibilities. Not sure if I'll go any further. They've put the first two seasons formatted for ebooks - linked from http://shadowunit.org/