Colleen Mondor Reviews Malicia by Steven Dos Santos

Malicia, Steven Dos Santos (Page Street Pub­lishing 978-1-645-67787-1, $18.99, 352pp, hc) June 2024. Cover by Aleksey Pollack.

If you are in the mood for a deeply dark YA fan­tasy, with plenty of terror, gore, and moments of blood splattered dismemberment, then Steven Dos Santos has you covered with his latest, Malicia. Set on a small island off the coast of the Dominican Republic, Malicia is a theme park that was the site of a devastating massacre. Now abandoned and, finally, being torn down, it is owned by Ray’s once-powerful father and is the place where his mother and brother were killed. On the weekend before Halloween, he brings his friends Joaquin, Sofia, and Isabella out to the island ostensibly to film a movie for their college applications but really to attempt to contact his dead brother. The fact that there is a hurricane headed their way is just an inconvenience; Ray has got to hold his secret séance. He figures with all the construction workers around, and a bevy of tunnels built beneath the park, that if the storm hits they will all be fine. Unfortunately, something very bad has been reawakened by all the recent work and it is feeding, and when Ray and his friends arrive, it is still hungry.

Well, holy crap. It is not a spoiler to say that there plenty of pieces of dead construction workers waiting for Ray and his friends when they arrive. The hurricane, of course, hits the island, and the thing that has been awakened has a field day with all the creepy rides and buildings in the park. (Did I forget to mention that Malicia’s theme is a homage to horror? This is like the darkest Disney or Six Flags you can imagine.) On top of all this, Ray has not told anyone what he really intends to do, Joaquin has his own very dangerous secret, Isabella is plotting her own movie, and Sofia, poor Sofia, is about to pay a price for caring too much about her dream to become a doctor. To be honest, some of the secret-keeping gets to be a bit much for me and I would have liked to have seen more on-the-page development of Joaquin, who is wrestling with a huge but somewhat conve­nient secret. (I had a hard time believing that he was capable of playing the kind of long and malevolent game that his secret demanded.) But the draw of Malicia is getting on the ride and going wherever it takes you, and Dos Santos is very good at accomplishing that goal. The de­scriptions are outstanding (especially the gory ones) and the park is a first-rate setting. (Thank you for the map!) Personally, I would love to see the movie that came out of this weekend (The Blair Witch Project wishes it was set at Malicia). Malicia promises a trip into madness and it delivers on every shivery count.

This review and more like it in the April 2024 issue of Locus.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field.

©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.