Get warm, read cold
Synopsis
WORMS GONE WILD! It’s 1998, and the town of Demise, North Dakota, is recovering from the Meteor Murders, hundreds of deaths caused by alien worms but blamed on a mass poisoning by a doomsday cult. While nineteen-year-old Realene’s heroic actions saved the lives of many, she wants nothing more than to hide from the world and mourn the ones she couldn’t save. When a second half of the meteor is found north of the border where her best friend Nate is on a spring break trip, she’ll have to face her fears and venture into Canada to find him. The only thing standing in her way are rampant alien worms, a covert military op, and the cold snap of the century.
Review
In 2004’s wildly fun Frost Bite, horror author Angela Sylvaine took us back to the nineties, also known in my own head as my childhood, and gave us a small town nostalgic action horror comedy very much in the Tremors/Gremlins mold (but make it more sci-fi). The action was fun and deftly choreographed, the meteor worms taking over rodents (and increasingly larger creatures) was creepy and gross in equal measure and Sylvaine’s gift of writing character was reflected in the nicely drawn dynamic of Realene, the nineteen year old with dreams of leaving her small North Dakotan town, and her best friend Nate, who’d rather she didn’t. Now she’s back with the sequel, Cold Snap, out from Dark Matter Ink March 17, and I’m pleased to report that it continues the fun of the original but throws in more twists and, reflecting the darker matter of Sylvaine’s short stories, goes quite dark on its reflections on grief and loss. It’s a hell of sequel, and you’d have to be an amnesiac meteor worm victim to miss out on this series.
Plot wise, we’re no longer in the small town of Demise, North Dakota but a bit of the ways up north in Winnipeg, Canada. Realene’s best bud Nate now has a girlfriend, and they’ve gone up there for spring break (which also happens near Canadian lakes as well as on coastal American beaches, this book taught me) But it seems the meteor worms might be back, and Realene in rescue mode decides to go after them, and find out what exactly the military’s involvement in this new outbreak is—and why her town’s religious cult is back in the mix.
Sylvaine’s gift for engrossing you in her young characters’ travails is immediately on show in this enormously addictive sequel which I ate up in a couple of sittings; the dynamic of the best friends having to navigate one of them being in a relationship (Nate’s cheerleader-type gf over-eagerly trying to make friends with a sceptical Realene provides a lot of the early comedy) is deftly done, and all the new characters we meet in this sequel leave a mark even with small page time. Sylvaine also cleverly avoids the trap of these kinds of alien action horror sequels of simply rehashing the original; without spoiling anything, the threat in this one is of a very different nature, and features more conspiratorial twists then monster mayhem (though there are still worms aplenty, fear not). This feels like a sequel that expands the lore, not merely tries to rebake it. But it still features the kind of kinetic action set-pieces that made the original extremely readable.
However, it’s the darker focus on grief and loss that gives this sequel an extra edge. Both Realene and Nate, who at this point are down to one parent between them, are forced to contend with more loss while trying to get over their previous loss, and it’s these underlying themes of how to use the found family of the present to recover from the pain of the past that makes this more thoughtful than your average space critter action fest. Sylvaine (who is no stranger to going dark as witnessed in her outstanding collection The Dead Spot: Stories of Lost Girls) is good at lulling you into an entertained state then hitting you with a dark twist or devastating death or feeling of loss, and it makes this a spiky as well as a moreish read.
Overall, Cold Snap is not just the sequel that fans of the nostalgic, 90s-set action comedy horror original were hoping for, but a darker, twistier ride, proving that Sylvaine is willing to feed you emotional damage with your meteor worms. An enormously fun and heartfelt horror series.
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