The Jaguar Hunter

This was Lucius Shepard's first successful collection, and is still one of the best short story collections I own. The characters are always personal, human or not, often haunted by experience they don't understand. The title story is unabashedly romantic but ferocious in its heart. "The End of Life as We Know It", about a couple who need and get a shakeup, will be recognized by anyone who's ever been in a rut. Several stories take legendary creatures from Latin America and put them into settings that make them completely probable, if not inevitable. Great writing.

This book is introspective without being maudlin, and I findmyself struggling for a better word than "wistful", but alas,no cross-referenced OED at my fingertips.Therefore: I can promise you this, there's not a happy ending in the book, and I found myself at first very disappointed in this growing trend. At some point in the third short story, I realized that he would supply no easy answers, and the converse might prove true: nothing but hard questions from here on.Stories wrapped up neatly, even with the bad guy winning, aren't a possibility for Shepard. Life is like that sometimes, and the choices that lead you to a place you wish you hadn't visited. But, since you're there, take in the scenery and try to pass on a warning to others...This is my first formal introduction to Lucius Shepard; it won't be my last meeting with his work, for sure.

The Jaguar Hunter is still the best introduction to the frustratingly inconsistent work of Lucius Shephard. Shephard is at his best in short stories and some of those in this collection show a real mastery of the form, telling often quite simple moral tales in settings packed dense with strange underpinning imagery and meaning. The collection divides into several different overlapping types: traveller's tales, New England horror, Latin American magic realism, those dealing with the ongoing shadow cast by Nazism, fantasy etc. It is really a matter of taste which you prefer: my own favourites are the title story, which tingles with atmosphere and magical possibility; the two treatments of the legacy of the Third Reich - the terrifying 'Mengele', and the bizarre, menacing 'A Spanish Lesson'; and the magnificent 'R & R'. I like the New England-set tales less, but even they far outdo Stephen King.Shephard's writing has never been better than is these early stories (and also in the underrated novel 'Life During Wartime'); lush but never bloated and often ironic but always moral. I just wish he would find his form again and stop writing yet more vampire novels!

Fourteen short stories, including a novella new to print, provide a fine collection of Lucius Shepard's skills in Jaguar Hunter, and outstanding anthology headed by a Nebula-winning title story. From a war of the future and wind spirits to a woman's end of life, this is filled with diverse plots.

Lucius Shepard is truly a master of the short story and novella form, and this book is proof of it. It's sad to see it out of print, for Shepard's is one of the most challenging voices in fantastic fiction.Among the tales included, the most astounding is "R & R", which won a Nebula Award. This is a masterpiece that showcases Shepard's main themes: war, magic and the intoxicating jungle. With brief details of SF, mostly it is his interpretation of Latin American magical realism.After this, the tales I found more haunting are "How the Wind Spoke at Madaket" and "The End of Life as we Know it". The first one, a horror tale about a wind elemental ravaging a town, tells about the impossibility of love when confronting mindless desire. The second one is about a couple on the verge of splitting, finding shamanism in the Guatemalan jungle and changing them and their relationship forever.The rest of the stories explore different shades of this same mix of magic and exoticism, and not a single one falters: "The Jaguar Hunter", "The Night of White Bairab", "Salvador", "Black Coral", "A Traveller's Tale", "Mengele", "The Man who Painted the Dragon Griaule" and "A Spanish Lesson".I had read this book years ago in a Spanish translation. Recently, I found an original copy in a big chain bookstore, and snatched it right away. Whatta treasure! If you are lucky enough to find a copy, grab it up. You won't regret doing so.