Dreams and Shadows cover art

Dreams and Shadows

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Dreams and Shadows

By: C. Robert Cargill
Narrated by: Vikas Adam
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

 In the debut novel DREAMS AND SHADOWS, screenwriter and noted film critic C. Robert Cargill takes us beyond the veil, through the lives of Ewan and Colby, young men whose spirits have been enmeshed with the otherworld from a young age.

This brilliantly crafted narrative - part Neil Gaiman, part Guillermo Del Torro, part William Burroughs - follows the boys from their star-crossed adolescences to their haunted adulthoods. Cargill's tour-de-force takes us inside the Limestone Kingdom, a parallel universe where whisky swilling genies and foul mouthed wizards argue over the state of the metaphysical realm. Having left the spirit world and returned to the human world, Ewan and Colby discover that the creatures from this previous life have not forgotten them, and that fate can never be sidestepped.

With sensitivity and hopeful examination, Cargill illuminates a supernatural culture that all too eerily resembles our own. Set in a richly imagined and constructed world, complete with its own richly detailed history and mythology, DREAMS AND SHADOWS is a deeply engaging story about two extraordinary boys becoming men.

Read by Vikas Adam

(p) 2013 HarperCollins Publishers©2013 C. Robert Cargill Coming of Age Dragons & Mythical Creatures Fantasy Genre Fiction Horror Metaphysical & Visionary Fiction Dream Science Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Prey of Gods cover art
We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories cover art
A Psalm for the Wild-Built cover art
Paladin's Grace cover art
The Bones of the Earth, Volume 1 cover art
A Better Place cover art
Female Science Fiction Writer cover art
Kiss Me Deadly cover art
Willow Man cover art
Strangewood cover art
Roan cover art
Shadow of Innocence cover art
Sabriel cover art
Breathing Room cover art
Unbound cover art
The Neighbor cover art

Critic reviews

' novel with talking dogs, angry genies and very, very drunk angels. It's also a perfect chaser for American Gods.
All stars
Most relevant
this story seems disjointed at the start. separate tragically horrible short stories beginning what turns out to be an excellently written plot and memorable characters

dark and tragic but wonderfully written

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
There is a veil between this world and the supernatural world of fairies, pixies, goblins etc. It's not a case of pretty wee flower fairies at the bottom of the garden, it's Tinkerbell in major psycho beastie mode and drunk angels on the rampage.

A baby is swapped with a changeling shortly after its birth and the two boys' lives are followed to adulthood.

Demonic Pixies

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Nearly finished this audiobook, and absolutely loving it, I only listen in small blocks to make the whole experience last longer!

Good story, well read.

Loving it

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Nothing

Would you ever listen to anything by C. Robert Cargill again?

Never

Who might you have cast as narrator instead of Vikas Adam?

Anyone

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Dreams and Shadows?

All of them

Any additional comments?

Quite possibly the worst book I've ever suffered through, performed in an affected fake accent punctuated by falsetto screeching.

Avoid at all costs

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.