Book Review | The Mystery of the Pale King

The Mystery of the Pale King by Sam Flynn paints a dread-inducing flintlock fantasy novella. It centers around Faron, a page who recounts a mission gone awry. He was sent with a church retinue to the city of Hathur—where a heretic had been holding performances for a bizarre play. However, upon their arrival, they discovered that children were going mysteriously missing and a sinister force may be at work.

The story weaves an undercurrent of faith, politics, and gothic and cosmic horror and takes place in a decaying world reminiscent of Bloodborne or The Gutter Prayer.

The atmosphere is fantastic and we get some lyrically lovely descriptive passages like the following: ".... I too beheld a city in the sky. Did I gaze upon heaven, I wondered? But I saw no beauty in the crumbling temples and desecrated tombs, the detritus of a thousand civilizations, devoid of life, howling and empty, save for milk-white shadows masked in cloud and fog, the residents of an ersatz realm that resembled nothing less than a graveyard."

I loved these aspects! In fact, I wish the story had leaned even harder into horror territory because it's not until the climax of the novella that I got the levels of madness and monstrous imagery that I was hoping for. I’m a horror fanatic though so other fantasy readers’ expectations may vary.

Special thanks to the author for providing me with a review copy.

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