Barnett is an expat Briton living in Kalimantan, in Indonesia. A momentary act of kindness from him sends Curtis MacKinnon to a trading post deep in the jungle. After a while, Barnett gets alarming correspondence from the trading post that sends him to confront MacKinnon.
I’m not familiar with Shepard and from reading this, I assumed he was a literary writer, dipping his toe into the SF genre, but Wikipedia describes him as an SF author, albeit one with “an awareness of literary antecedents.” There is definitely a literary tone to this novella and the island land of Kalimantan is lovingly described.
The story straddles the line between SF and fantasy with talk of the spirit of the land, but also crashed alien spaceships on parallel worlds. The story is a bit of a character study, with MacKinnon and Barnett both being examined in some depth.
An interesting story, with a lot of pleasure to be had from the language and descriptions. While there is some action late in the story, this isn’t a book to read for that. It’s one for introspection and to delve into the landscape. Worth it, but be prepared to have to do a bit of work.
