Alex Brown Reviews Frost Bite by Angela Sylvaine
Frost Bite, Angela Sylvaine (Dark Matter INK 978-1-95859-803-0, $17.99. 280pp, tp) October 2023. Cover by Eric Hibbeler.
In Angela Sylvaine’s Frost Bite, winter has hit Demise, North Dakota hard. Snow and ice have blanketed the town, making everything as cold and miserable as Realene feels. She was on her way out of town, but when her mom was diagnosed with a fatal health condition, Realene’s future crumbled away. And then the meteorite hits.
Strange things start happening almost immediately. Prairie dogs are supposed to be hibernating but keep popping up all over town. Normally chill people are extra aggressive or can’t remember things that just happened. As the violence ramps up, Realene realizes that animals and humans alike are infected with something connected to the meteorite. That’s when things go really off the rails. Chased by animals and a religious cult hellbent on using the alien invasion as a launching pad for Revelations, Realene and her friend Nate will do whatever it takes to get them and Realene’s sick mom out of town before the prairie dogs get them, too.
I was excited for Frost Bite because it sounded like it was going to be a campy YA horror, and with a queer main character to boot. However, now I think the decision to market it as a young adult horror novel rather than adult was the wrong one. I read a ton of young adult fiction, and, within that, horror is one of my favorite genres. I read most of the YA horror novels published every year, especially the queer ones. I understand the level of violence and the ways violence is usually depicted in YA horror. With Frost Bite, I was unprepared for the sheer volume of graphic depictions of death. It is page after page and paragraph after paragraph of animals and people getting bludgeoned, kicked, smashed, poisoned, chopped, run over, or shot. All of it happens on the page, either directly in front of our teen protagonists or perpetrated by them. It’s brutal and bloody in a way that doesn’t typically appear in YA horror.
As a high school librarian, I know plenty of teens who enjoy reading YA horror but who would hesitate at the level of on-the-page violence in this novel. On top of that, the main character is 19 and already graduated high school. Young adult books are typically targeted at 13- to 17-year-olds, but given the themes and graphic nature of the violence here, I don’t know many 13-year-olds who are developmentally ready for this book. That’s not to say teen readers can’t or shouldn’t read adult horror – I’m a firm believer in reading whatever you want and knowing your personal comfort level – but there’s a big difference between fiction written specifically for teenagers and fiction written with teen protagonists. Ultimately, it read more like a horror novel written for millennials who were teenagers in the ’90s (like me!) rather than readers who are teenagers in 2023.
This review has focused a lot on what Frost Bite isn’t, but what it is is a great (adult) horror novel. The novel is fun, weird, and frightening in a way I think people who are used to more adult horror will really enjoy. Although I prefer my horror of the YA variety, Sylvaine pulled me in with the playful, unassuming narrative style and the bonkers aliens. Realene and Nate are two characters you can’t help but root for. Everything Realene endures makes me want to pull her in for a good, long hug. She cares deeply and is trying to figure out how to be a good person without compromising her morals, and doing all that in the face of alien parasites and a killer cult.
Angela Sylvaine’s Frost Bite reminds me a lot of The Faculty or Tremors, two deeply weird, very gross, and charmingly funny horror movies. This novel is a must-read for fans of horror, especially millennials. The blend of nostalgia and horror is perfect. With that nailbiter of a cliffhanger, readers will have a hard time waiting for the sequel.
Alex Brown is a librarian, author, historian, and Hugo-nominated and Ignyte award-winning critic who writes about speculative fiction, young adult fiction, librarianship, and Black history.
This review and more like it in the December and January 2023 issue of Locus.
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