Review of the Day: The Shadow Stream by Kirk Lombard, ill. Parker Thornton

The Shadow Stream
By Kirk Lombard
Illustrated by Parker Thornton
Unruly (an imprint of Enchanted Lion Books)
ISBN: 9781592704941
$19.99
Ages 10 and up
On shelves October 20th

There must have been a point at which we all communally decided that talking animals were a kid thing. Oh sure, there’s always the odd exception in the adult book market, your Jonathan Livingston Seagull or your The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. But those books are rather, ah, how do you say, allegorical. Are all animal titles? The obvious exception would be, of course, Watership Down, a book whose sole purpose is to flummox people that like to catalog things. Is it for adults? Teens? Kids? All of the above? Those same questions could probably be applied to the brand new book The Shadow Stream by Kirk Lombard. When folks ask me what it’s about, I like to say it’s a talking animal book that’s also a deeply realistic consideration of the juvenile detention system. So… y’know. That. And that would be all well and good, and we could forget about it entirely, if it weren’t for the inconvenient fact that the book is engrossing. The kind of title that despite its whopping 449-page count feels too short when you get to the end. This book that is potentially for all readers also runs the risk of being for no readers at all. Yet I can’t help but believe that something this unforgettable may end up changing some young reader’s life. Call it a hunch.

Two narratives run in parallel. One follows the boy, Gabriel. A cog in the system, he’s closed down emotionally, mentally, you name it. All he wants is to survive the Abiddon County Juvenile Center where he’s currently housed. But that’s before the dying man comes. He’s the uncle Gabriel never knew, and who just a couple of times takes the boy to the Shongunk River. Meanwhile, in the Verkatykill Fish Hatchery at the southern end of the Shongunk Valley, hybrid trout are being bred. One of these trout, named Dunno, appears to be quite average. Yet due to a confluence of events, both boy and trout are bound to change the future of this river. There’s a dam about to be built, and when it’s finished what once was a river will become a very different kind of lake. And if this story also happens to involve drunken deer, a one-eyed raccoon warrior who wages war on the human population, and a bullhead named Momo who has a crazy plan to save them all (and as we all know, even a crazy plan is better than no plan at all), well, what of it? Sometimes the best stories are the ones told by the most voices.

What was the moment where I fell in love with this book? Sometimes when you read something you can pinpoint the precise instance. I think that for me this was more a case where I fell in love with the characters and that, in turn, made me fall in love with the book. First, there was Gabriel himself. Lombard, according to his bio, spent 14 years as an art teacher and counselor for severely emotionally disturbed kids in the Bay Area. On the page, I don’t need to tell you how difficult it is to make a quiet, silent, reticent child character not only sympathetic to the reader but likeable as well. Lombard’s technique is twofold. He begins by showing us Gabriel’s cleverness. We get to see the inner workings of his mind as he calculates every interaction and makes strategic judgement calls. The different levels of strategy that Gabriel has to work on (particularly when two alpha males in the center start demanding he take sides) proves to us that he’s smart. But then we get to see that softer side of him alongside the river. It’s a side that blossoms into care, so that by the time he has to do everything he can to save what he now loves, he’s the only person in his position capable of doing so, and we in turn love HIM.

That’s the human character, and maybe if Lombard had chosen to halve this manuscript and eject all the talking animals, it could be a strong title in and of itself. But as much as I liked Gabriel, I really and truly adored the animals. I loved Dizzy, the buck who discovers discarded human alcohol and grows dependent on it after his mate is torn to shreds by the local dogs. And I couldn’t get enough of the raccoon Kinjacca. Here we have a character worthy of a prequel (the exploits of his youth sound like they’d be something to hear about). Ironically it’s hard to cuddle up to the true animal protagonist of the book, the fish Dunno. This is understandable. Humans don’t really ascribe too many emotions to fishies (and the very end of this book works as well as it does precisely for that reason). I think Lombard knew that, on some level. He was aware that his hero, who’s kind of a passive protagonist if I’m being honest, can’t be our only representative of the animal kingdom. Dizzy goes on a true hero’s journey of his own, and Kinjacca’s rage is worth the price of admission. Without those two, this would be a lesser title.

The choice to illustrate the book with the art of Parker Thornton was, in retrospect, a surprise to me. Truly this book didn’t need any illustrations (except maybe a map, but I’ll get to that) to appreciate the story. The human sections do get some pictures, but rarely of the people themselves. More likely you’ll see a row of busted up warehouses. Gabriel proves the exception. You can see him on the cover and, inside the book, crouched beside the river. Always with his back to the viewer. Just a hoodie and the quiet. The animals each get their own moment to shine in the sun, but the book’s a bit sporadic about when you’ll get a piece of art. You might read from page 90, where Dizzy humiliates himself amongst the garbage bags, then not see another picture until pages 182-183. Still, that makes it a kind of a treat. The art is like a little reward, popping up without warning. And since Thornton is primarily an artist who specializes in nature, there’s not a lot of anthropomorphizing here (any that there is comes straight from the text anyway).

If I’ve a criticism of the book it’s a pretty straightforward one. Considering the effort they took to get illustrator Parker Thornton involved in this project, it seems downright inconsiderate that they failed to include a map of the Shongunk River. I found my poor little brain bending over backwards to try to envision how the Verkatykill Fish Hatchery and all the waters that it entails related to the River, the dam, the big rock, the falls, and all the other aspects of this story. No shade on Lombard’s visual storytelling. The man does what he can, but even Tolkien understood that if you want to truly bring a reader along in a story, you gotta spell some things out visually. A character sheet wouldn’t have been entirely out of place either for that matter (there are an awful lot of fish in this book).

That’s not what’s going to bother other people, though. I can already predict the element of the book that will raise hackles. Lombard makes one particular choice with this book that is seriously going to divide people on whether or not they love it. There is a theory that the Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis would have received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture had the movie not harmed a cat. People get awfully attached to pets, particularly cats and dogs, but cats and dogs can cause true devastation when it comes to natural environments. Housecats allowed outside are responsible for the destruction of native bird species at an alarming rate. And dogs? The two dogs in The Shadow Stream cut a swath of destruction in this story that is both an extension of the humans around them and another force entirely. They gleefully maim and hurt so many animals that an entire deer population feels forced to flee them. They also get their comeuppance. Their SERIOUS comeuppance. Let me just say, this book highlights nature red in tooth and claw. You have been warned.

I haven’t even gotten to the fact that sometimes the book is funny (the opossum funeral is fantastic) or that it made me cry a little at the end (doggone it). But I do want to address the audience for this title once and for all. The Watership Down comparisons aren’t wrong, but at the same time, and in spite of some of the violence, I do think that this falls into the supremely unhelpful category of “all ages” (though maybe I’d say it’s more 10+ than something you’d read aloud to a 5-year-old). You don’t see a lot of “all ages” books in the 21st century. Even if a writer intends a book to come across in that manner, the publisher will usually wrench and mangle it into a more specific age categorization instead. Not so here. And so, we’re left with a rather magnificent book and a rarity besides. Defies expectations. How does it do it? Dunno.

On shelves October 20th

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2026, Reviews, Reviews 2026