Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsWhen Things Get Dark-
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 9, 2022
Cosmic Horror lacks character. Wait! Sorry, no. Don’t get mad, let me try again: Cosmic Horror lacks characters! Well, that’s not right either, is it? The sub-genre certainly has character and characters, but I think it’s fair to argue that – historically speaking – the characters on offer are a bit stale. Plenty of notable exceptions exist, but far too often authors will pummel me with world-devouring monsters and helpless characters who are begging to lose their sanity, but those same authors will stop short of developing those characters in any meaningful way. At best, this blunts the aforementioned loss of sanity and - at worst – blunts the impact of the entire story. Thankfully, P.L. McMillan puts this problem to bed with her short story collection “What Remains When The Stars Burn Out”. Over the course of this nerve-shattering collection, McMillan meticulously weaves twelve scintillating tales of Cosmic Horror with a divergent batch of compelling(and tragically doomed) characters. In summary: these stories have teeth.
Before I dig into the stories, allow me a moment to gush about the aesthetics of this collection. It’s beautiful! Not only is the cover art gorgeous, but McMillan flexes her artistic sensibilities by opening each story with a captivating illustration. Throw in the fact that this collection is perfectly formatted for e-readers and I do declare that it’s one of the best looking, smoothest-reading collections of the year.
So, about those stories. There’s a lot on offer here. Most of these are tried-and-true short stories that range in length from 2k-7k words. With that said, “Planet of the Hungry” is a novelette and falls on the lengthier side. Yes, I just used the word “length”, but I really didn’t notice any length as one story slipped effortlessly into the next and before I knew it, my Kindle was telling me that I was on the last page. I won’t say that I unleashed a tirade of unrepeatable language at my Kindle in a fit of rage, but, yeah, I absolutely did.
Anyway. The real strength of these stories is the characters. Yes, McMillan packs each story with enough tension-laced atmosphere to give a toddler angina, and the collection is overflowing with brilliantly chilling twists and turns, but if I don’t know the characters, and if they can’t – at the very least – communicate to me how scared they are as their reality unravels around them, then it’s all a bit pointless, isn’t it? Thankfully, McMillan understands this conundrum better than most and peppers this collection with a wide-ranging cast of characters from all walks of life. Doctors, scientists, reporters; people with crippling anxieties, cheaters, victims of cheaters, prisoners, murderers, they’re all here! And McMillan meticulously molds each-and-every one of these characters with a careful hand, then feeds them all to the thresher.
A few standouts:
Despite only being the opener, “Sanitize” is an industrial-strength dose of terror and may be the strongest story in the collection. What seems like an anxiety-induced bout of irrationality for Paige overflows into a nightmare as a she begins to manifest disturbing symptoms of an unknown disease. No one can see these symptoms except Paige and are quick to try and convince her that it’s all just in her head. She almost believes them until whatever is “just in her head” begins ravaging everyone Paige touches. McMillan ensures that we feel every ripple of doubt and every twinge of terror racing through Paige’s veins as the world dissolves around her and her sanity is pushed to the brink. Brilliant stuff.
“Godmouth” is an unbridled one-two-punch of Cosmic Horror. A word (Godmouth) is spreading through a city like a virus, leaving violence and hysteria in its wake and heralding the arrival of something sinister. The characters are all quite relatable, ordinary people, who make a story like this much more agonizing to endure. It’s sort of like watching a car crash in slow motion; we know how this ends, but we can’t look away. McMillan won’t let us.
In case the rest of this collection’s offerings aren’t quite bleak enough to suit your tastes, “Gemini Syndrome” has you covered. Mara is an officer on a station named Omikron III and a family emergency spurs her to return home. The problem being that “home” is Earth and Earth is about two-decades worth of space travel away. So, Mara opts to use “DMT”, an experimental method of teleportation that will send her to Earth instantly. Problem solved, right? Well, sort of. “DMT” is rumored to have some nasty side-effects(like death), and although these rumors can’t be proven, advocates of the technology are a bit evasive when discussing the risks involved. Despite her reservations, Mara doesn’t have time to waste and goes all-in on using “DMT”. What follows is the grimmest ending I’ve read this year, but it’s so profoundly speculative that I haven’t stopped thinking about it in days.
In the end, stories are only as good as their characters. Yes, spectacle and theatrics can carry a story to great heights, but without compelling characters to ground them, they can fly too close to the sun and bring that story crashing back down in a fiery heap. Sure, that can be fun, but it isn’t sustainable and – more often than not – it isn’t satisfying. In case I haven’t been clear: P.L. McMillan discerns and applies this notion in a most profound way, and through her staunch unwillingness to sacrifice character for story or story for character, succeeds in releasing one of the most cathartic and unnerving horror collections of the year. Read it.
