The Shadow

The novel “Shadow” is a fantastic action thriller in the spirit of Lukyanenko’s “Night Watch,” as well as an exciting historical drama — a patchwork inspired by “Cloud Atlas.”

In the debut novel by Ivan Filippov, a creative producer of Non-Stop Production and the author of top podcasts about the film industry, Moscow turns to its “underground” shadow side — the dwelling of restless souls, whose choices and determination will decide the fate of millions of modern Muscovites.

The main character is the investigator Stepan Korneev. Against his boss’s wishes, Korneev tries to uncover the circumstances of the death of a young girl, Sonya, in a car accident. The guilty party is assigned to an immigrant — the driver of a sprinkler truck — who fled the scene. But Stepan sees inconsistencies in the case, and his immediate superior is far too insistent that he stop the investigation. He doesn’t even manage to find anything concrete when, that very evening, he is murdered.

And it is precisely the tragic death that marks the beginning of Stepan’s real adventures. Moscow chooses him as its hero — the Shadow — and sends Stepa into the strange world of the Moscow suburbs: the city’s subconscious, populated by restless souls of everyone who died there since its founding. Murderers and suicides whose bodies were never found and, according to the rules, were buried, are forced to wait here for the end of the world. Such souls have accumulated in large numbers — a Mongol princess, wars from all eras ranging from the battles against the Horde and Napoleon to soldiers of the Second World War, priests, professors, princes, and stablehands, or simply ordinary people who found themselves “not at the right time and not in the right place.”

The city senses a deadly threat, and Stepan must find and destroy the villain who has planned to destroy Moscow.

Why does the city choose an unremarkable policeman to save it? What connection is there between the road incident with a random (was it random?) victim and the chthonic evil threatening the capital?