“The Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship (SFINCS, pronounced “sphinx”) is a yearly competition to recognize, honor, and celebrate the talent and creativity present in the indie community. We are a sister competition to both SPFBO and SPSFC, and we highlight greatness in the novella format in all areas of speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc.).” – From the official SFINCS website.
Note: The following review contains only my personal thoughts as a judge and does not reflect the views of the team as a whole.
REVIEW
Cosmic horror in a secondary world seems in many ways like an ill-fitting match. So much of the weirdness of the genre depends on the contrast of the deep fantastic against a deceptively mundane world. Yet the early pulps, where cosmic horror found purchase, are filled with secondary universes and fantastical or science fictional realms. In the right hands, the high weirdness of cosmic horror’s cultists, eldritch entities, and chaotic universes can be contrasted very effectively against what passes for normal in a secondary world. Happily, The Mystery of the Pale King achieves this very well. The Early Medievalesque setting that Sam Flynn uses to construct the claustrophobic atmosphere and religious tension in Pale King opens the work up to a wider pool of potential readers, while also commenting on and subverting audience expectation when it comes to epic fantasy conventions. I recommend it to fans of eldritch or cosmic horror, as well as grimdark medievalism. 
For any cosmic horror fans with their tentacular appendages slipping deep inside the Mythos, I’ll further recommend it to acolytes of Hastur, The King in Yellow (though I confess that I myself am pledged to the Crawling Chaos).
The Mystery of the Pale King is recounted in retrospect by a page named Faron, and concerns Faron’s journey with the bishop he serves to a community of recidivist pagans. From the get, the audience is clued in that all is not what it seems and that the Church’s official account of Bishop Antonius’s failure in the community of Hathur is more complex than they are letting on and that they are, perhaps, slandering him in order to distract from their own corruption. Essentially, the church of the god Sol (a Christian analogue), has recently converted the people of Hathur, in part due to the efforts of the man now ruling as its heroic king. However, disturbing rumours of the Hero’s reversion to paganism, along with his scandalous use of the kingdom’s coffers to fund nightly productions of a play called, “The Mystery of the Pale King,” have drawn the Church’s ire. Antonius has been sent to investigate along with a branch of the Church’s army. Once Faron and Antonius arrive, it becomes clear that the Hero and his play are hiding much darker secrets. Children all over the kingdom have vanished and Faron suspects human sacrifice. Even worse, beneath the surface of the community’s reversion lies a yet more troubling truth: the “Pale King” worshipped by the Hero is actively hostile toward the native pagans and harbours a bloodthirst that is both otherworldly and bizarrely linked to the Church itself.
Since Pale King is in many ways a mystery, and since part of the joy of reading in this case involves following the story’s threads to the heart of its web, I’ll leave my summary of the plot at that. It is worth mentioning, however, that, as suggested in my opening paragraph, Flynn makes reference to eldritch deities from the cosmic horror canon that include the god Hastur (popularized by Robert Chambers, H. P. Lovecraft, and August Derleth), and, somewhat unexpectedly, the Deadlights of Stephen King. The cosmic horror elements of the story are handled very well throughout and you can perfectly feel that Pale King was written firmly within a particular tradition.
The character work throughout is also largely satisfying. Faron is a compelling narrator and his affection and admiration for Bishop Antonius is sufficiently convincing that it becomes easy to care for the pair of them as you read along. Both characters are outcasts to some degree, and both share mysterious pasts whose details are only revealed at the novella’s climax. For his part, Antonius is disenchanted with the Church’s corruption, as well as its wealth, and comes across as a little Franciscan in terms of his worldview. Faron, who comes from a humble background, is likewise likeable. To some degree, this is especially important, since the threat of Antonius and Faron’s own moral ruination hangs over the narrative. For the reader to have a vested interest in this, we have to have an emotional stake in their morality early on. Additional, queer elements of the plot were well-handled and similarly enriched the narrative.
“Deep within, a question echoed as if trapped in a cave. ‘Do you think the Creator is punishing us?'”
The central thesis of cosmic horror is arguably that the universe is, at best, completely uncaring. Humankind is not special in any way, and indeed, it is far better to pass through life unnoticed by more powerful, godlike forces than it is to be recognized. This remains true in Pale King, which, though not entirely bleak, is a very dark take on religion (but especially, organized religion and religious affiliation). Readers looking for a finely-detailed look at some of the weirder aspects of real-world Early Medieval religious expression are, however, unlikely to find that here. As is often the case in the genre, the Church or Sol and its pagan precursor are painted largely in broad, didactic strokes. While Pale King is thus, in many ways, a deconstruction and critique of grand heroic mythmaking, due to the novella’s generic roots, that deconstruction is less about reweirding existing religious practices through a recognition of the ways early Christianity and its forebears rarely correspond to our popular representation of them, and more about the rendering of all religion as something terrifyingly alien.
While I enjoyed Pale King‘s mysteries and horrors, I did feel that its end stumbled somewhat. Flynn successfully builds toward a dramatic conclusion, with the titular play left mysterious till the novella’s shattering end. Yet, when that end comes, it’s so full of bombast and revelation that it veers a little too wildly toward soap opera. There are so many individual reveals, twists, and developments that the dialogue becomes slightly overburdened at a moment when to maintain tension it ought to feel tight, and sometimes the descriptions of the grand set pieces–though very cool–hurt clarity. The novella is generally very very well written and edited, with a style that reads like a modern update to the often dense pulps, but there are also some tense issues early on–specifically the failure to use the past perfect when sometimes necessary. Small quibbles like this, including Faron’s use of “Bishop” as though it were a name instead of a title or occupation, pulled me out on occasion early in the story. The tighter Pale King gripped me, however, the less I noticed these things. Indeed, the very fact that I kept getting pulled back to the novella, wondering what was going to happen or what horrors awaited poor Faron, is a huge mark in its favour.
I remain very impressed by Pale King and was excited to see that Flynn has a follow-up, Dweller in Darkness, due for release in 2026 from Timber Ghost Press. A welcome addition to the cosmic horror genre, The Mystery of the Pale King impresses with its command of the subgenre, its intriguing characters, and its thrilling pace. Sam Flynn is an author to watch!
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