He knelt. Mushroom stalks bent like periscopes. He leaned toward them, they moved away. He gripped the grate with one hand, reached out with the other—they followed, back and forth as he waved, flexing the club-like orange tips.
Indie '25 continues for me as I round out my third lap with a healthy dose of mechanical pulp science fiction found in
’s Pallas. Full disclosure, I read this novel a few years ago while it was in beta so this is technically a re-read for me (though so much has changed since my initial read that it was a whole new experience). When I initially put out a call for novels for Indie ‘25 though, I think I got three or four recommendations for Pallas so I figured the universe was sending me a sign and just had to include it.So let’s all head down the elevator shaft to horrors adventure unknown!
Pallas follows the misadventures of Kylan Bence; a true blue collar guy who is a former miner and current space trucker that runs a route through the Belt for the faceless Ceres Mining Company. The story begins with his ship malfunctioning far from home, drifting around the titular asteroid of Pallas. The former mining settlement is supposed to be abandoned, but while Kylan waits for the Company to decide whether his life cargo is worth mounting a rescue mission for, he receives a reply to his SOS from the allegedly abandoned settlement and is welcomed inside.
Under the concrete dome of Pallas, he finds that the settlement has thrived in isolation. Lush vegetation and strange customs accompany stranger people who live beneath the oppression of the cloaked and foreboding Council, who seem determined to keep Kylan inside the settlement at all costs. After the cramped days in his truck with only the Com AI for company, the tempting offers of clean water, real food, a comfortable place to rest, and the beguiling exotic beauty of his escort Thalie are too much to pass up and Kylan thinks he has found a paradise. But when the beautiful façade of Pallas begins to rot away, Kylan turns to the withdrawn Sarra, the one who had contacted him in the first place. As our hero is stricken with a mysterious illness and the motivations of the Council begin to become clear, Kylan must find a way to escape Pallas as the settlement’s secrets begin to (quite literally) crawl under his skin.
Pallas walks a line between classic pulp fiction and folk horror; the novel starts with the typical sci-fi elements of advanced technology and the alien weirdness of life found out in the depths of space, the hints that something is inherently wrong with the settlement. The community on Pallas has a somewhat cultish vibe to it that begins as subtly unsettling before ramping into startling ‘holy shit’ moments of body horror and general creepiness as the story moves below the surface level.
The setting has an Edenic feel to it at the onset; the people are warm and welcoming when Kylan comes inside, appearing to be humans with odd skin tones that have been detached from Earth (Mars?) for so long that human ideals like morality, common sense, and inhabitation have evolved out of their society. They are one with Pallas, nurtured by the rich soils from which they can grow anything they may need; self-sufficient in that they make everything for themselves— From the silk for their clothing to the bricks for their homes, all of it spun from mycelium (mushrooms, if ya didn’t know). This allows them to also recycle, reuse, or compost anything that might be considered waste in normal society. They live and die by the rule of the Council, which looms over them from their monolithic black pyramid, an ever-present reminder of their presence. Despite the cultish weirdness, you’ll quickly fall in love with Pallas for yourself while reading. It’s a stable setting for a story; homey in the pleasing serenity while intriguing by the obvious differences that set it apart from the norm.
The setting aside, Pallas is a plot-driven story that moves along at a quick clip; almost with a racing-the-clock feel to it as Kylan clings to hope of being rescued, even through the illness that slowly creeps into him the longer he spends in Pallas. Sometimes when the timeframe of a novel is so condensed it can cause character development to be stunted, but this really isn’t the case with Pallas. As in all her books, Kuznak’s characters are what really does it for me. There are four distinct POVS in this novel, each containing different piece of a puzzle pieces that construct not only a wider picture of the history of the Pallas settlement and what’s going on there now, but also providing depth and complexity to the characters themselves.
Kylan Bence is our hero, of course. The Outsider who is just your decent Average-Joe type. He’s a good man at heart, but is flawed as all regular men are; not immune to temptation, loses his temper and isn’t afraid to throw hands, and is humble in his practical abilities as blue collar guys tend to be. He is also a bit of a tender romantic, which is nice to see in a “tough guy” protagonist. Kylan’s arrival might inspire a menagerie of different reactions from the Pallas residents (hope, wonder, rage, madness, general horniness, etc.), but he is the hero they needed in the end. His perspective also gives us some insight into the workings of the Company, beginning to give us an idea of how the mining colony of Pallas might have started vs. how it is now.
Then there is Thalie, the main liaison inside Pallas, who works well paired against Kylan. Outwardly, she’s calm and beautiful as the lush environment of Pallas, a favourite of the shadowy Council who is doing what she needs to for the betterment and propagation of Pallas itself. And while she might seem all smoldering looks, beckoning hips, and revealing expanses of cleavage at first, inside she’s calculating her every move while trying to maneuver our boy Kylan. Through her eyes, we get to see glimpses of the inner workings of the Council and come to understand their motivations, giving us the true depth of the depravity and corruption inside the would-be paradise.
Sarra and Janek are the other POVs of Pallas, both slightly more educated than the common folk inside the settlement as they are charged with managing the maintenance of the colony via the ancient technology left there by the Ceres Mining Company. In my opinion, their bits were where a lot of the meat of the story came from; we get a glimpse into the lives of Pallas’ every day citizens (ones who aren’t favourites of the Council like Thalie), working under or against their oppressive rulers. They show us the actual cracks in the system. These cracks are mimicked in the erratic, rebellious madness behaviours of Janek. I can’t touch on the resistant efforts of citizenry against the Council too much without spoiling anything, but let’s just say the when shit hits the fan, it was was Janek that threw it. On the flip side, Sarra is a excellent mirror to him as she tackles her obstacles rationally. I actually found Sarra drove a lot of the story overall; not just because she was the one to initially make contact with Kylan, but through her tinkering with the old computers and filling in the gaps between the past and the present as everything comes to a head. In addition, the way she is written offers a really neat bit of defamiliarization when she interacts with anything that we might find commonplace (a tablet, a juke box, etc.) that adds another layer of alien delight to the novel itself.
If there are any critiques to be offered for Pallas, it is that some people may not appreciate Kuznak’s prose at first. But to that I say: give it time. The prose jumps back and forth from a first-person internal monologue to a third-person limited perspective which can be a little jarring until you get used to the style, but the character POV never actually switches when this happens. After I got used to it I found that the abrupt switches not only helped with further immersion into the story by conveying a sense of urgency, but they also served to deepen my connection with the characters themselves as they face inward fear, dread, illness, or madness—and press on regardless.
Overall, for the fans of classic science fiction in the same vein as vintage Star Trek, Barbarella, Buck Rogers, or anything else out of an old Heavy Metal magazine, Pallas is not one you want to miss out on.
Thanks as always for reading The Word Dump, and I will catch you at my next Indie ‘25 review!