The Jaguar Hunter, by Lucius Shepard ***3/8

It's often been said that Shepard is the master of the novella, a sentiment with which I completely agree, although he showcases his skill with shorter works here as well. I really liked this collection, which consisted of several novella-length pieces (70+ pages), a few longer stories (30-40 pages), and a few of medium length (15-20 pages), with no truly short pieces. Of the 400 pages in the collection, I enjoyed virtually all of them. I read in an interview that Shepard isn't so fond of his older work these days, liking only a few of the stories in The Jaguar Hunter (the title piece, "R&R", and "A Traveler's Tale"). I agree with his taste in one sense - he picked out the three best pieces in the whole of the book. But even though I can point to a few flaws quite clearly (one of the stories reads like a B-movie ("How the Wind Spoke at Madaket") while two others use pre-existing evil characters (unnecessarily) to create tension ("Mengele" and "A Spanish Lesson")), I think he's overlooking a lot of the beauty in those stories and the rest of the collection. Quite simply, I find Shepard's writing to have that perfect combination of interesting language, beautiful imagery, complexity of ideas, and emotional punch. I've reviewed several Shepard books in the last six months, so I won't waste too much energy repeating some of my opinions about his work, but I'm very excited to read a more modern collection of his now for comparison. I recently bought Eternity And Other Stories, which contains stories written since about the year 2000. I look forward to experiencing the contrast to see if I can find discernable differences.
(Summer 2006)

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