Praise

"Martin Shaw is, without exaggeration, the most powerful writer of prose that I have read. A wild light begins to gleam in our eyes, our hair grows long, our language begins to shift, and in some inexplicable way, as humans long ago understood we could, we begin to become old growth ourselves."

"The heart has a true-north, says Martin Shaw. He uses it. His work combines a magnificence of soul with a deft acuity of intellect, portraying a quintessential comprehension of the human spirit in its mythic path. He writes in a rare register of an earthy seer and I am in awe."

"Martin Shaw's work is so very beautiful. A new animal. His love of images is deep and contagious. In the passion of his search he makes up new words that seem as though we've always known them. His language is tasty and surprising. This elegant combination of very fresh, free verse storytelling, and a deep untangling of myth feels so alive. What will it do next?"

"I can still remember the first time I heard Martin Shaw tell a story. The tale that emerged was like a living thing, bounding around, throwing itself at all of us there listening. I had never heard anything like it before. Martin is a one-off, his work is urgent and necessary. Scatterlings is his testament. The stories collected here are told in a way that makes it unlike any other book I have read."

"I will say this about Mr. Martin Shaw: I wish him protection from the saints and something like a pardon from the Lucid Gods. He is now as much and as good a teller as there probably is among us adorned and afflicted by the English tongue, and he has lingered a while in the old caves, as he says.

He knows that things can happen when the word is nailed to a tree, to be read. Things do happen.

And he's done it, and done it so very well, and so much in thrall to the chant that you can hear him. It may be wisdom he's done here. It may be something wiser.

I know that if had to choose kinship, Mr. Shaw the dowser and scriber on my left, or the Old Gods of Song who have granted me my tongue and my days on my right, I'd be pressed. Hard pressed. Probably I am.

So hail this Scatterlings, this treasure. Barley and love for its burdened, heathen son, the one who's come down from the hills with this Relic From the World Tree and from it has carved his plume and a way home. Would that this plea for a better day and its maker be granted not the cliff face but the long road, and peace for his earned, learned days. Homeward, now."

"An outrageous piece of magic."

"A true master. Martin Shaw is one of the very greatest storytellers we have."

"Visceral and highly imaginative, Shaw finds wildness in both landscape and language, using myth, philosophy and poetic leaps as a crossroads between the two. He needs to be read."

"With great skill, agility and elegance Martin Shaw takes us deeply to the mythic life-blood of his beloved Dartmoor – Martin's word-magic will embed you ever more powerfully in the soul of your own land, wherever on Earth you happen to be."

"Martin Shaw's gift is his unsurpassed ability to bring myth past locked doors and into our hearts. He reveals all the glory and terror of the human condition, showing us the deeper story of our own lives."

"Shaw is a writer of rare and fierce beauty.”

"Eloquent and elegant, Shaw offers an irresistible invitation into realms that hold the wisdom of, not only survival, but expanding into one's sense of purpose”

"How I love the intelligent, poetic and wild way of his voice."

"Martin Shaw is a teacher of profound cultural knowledge, and is a master artist at transmitting it. Those transmissions are subtle and profound. We desperately need his work."

"Martin Shaw is a conjurer, a thirteenth century troubadour dropped in our midst. He breathes into his characters a beating pulse, agile speech and bedazzling wit. Catch him anyway you can."