Solstice by Lorence Alison science fiction and fantasy book and audiobook reviewsSolstice by Lorence Alison science fiction and fantasy book and audiobook reviewsSolstice by Lorence Alison

Solstice (2020), by Lorence Alison, is subtitled “A Tropical Horror Comedy” and is a thinly fictionalized take on the disastrous Fyre Festival, with the addition of an eldritch sea monster lurking beneath the waves. I wasn’t expecting high literature from it, just the proverbial “beach read” to distract myself from the fact that there is no beach anywhere near me (and if there were, it would probably be closed anyway). But the more I think about it, the more it just doesn’t work for me.

Adri Sanchez is a smart, inquisitive teen who’s working as a waitress in her parents’ diner. They have lofty aspirations for her and have lined up a summer internship for her at a law office, but what Adri really wants to be is a journalist. Her wealthy best friend, Elena, is given two tickets to the much-hyped Solstice Festival on Myla Island, and invites Adri to go as her guest. Adri’s favorite artist is scheduled to play, so she really wants to go, but her parents forbid it. But Adri, technically eighteen, sneaks out and goes anyway, defying her parents for probably the first time in her life.

But the festival turns out to be a trainwreck. The initial ways it goes wrong are kind of funny, but won’t be new to anyone who followed the Fyre coverage in the real world; the FEMA tents and soggy cheese sandwiches appear on cue. But then Adri sees something she wasn’t supposed to see, and realizes there’s something worse going on at Solstice.

I liked Adri at first; her goals and curiosity are relatable, as is her less-privileged perspective on the #FirstWorldProblems all around her. As Solstice progresses, though, she’s sometimes less sympathetic. For example, at one point she’s thinking of leaving the island without Elena, who’s currently on a sketchy person’s yacht. She then realizes that she can’t do that — not because she’s worried about her best friend’s safety, but just because Elena has the plane tickets.

The monster doesn’t make sense to me. This monster is huge, and it hunts because it’s hungry, not for sport. At one point it eats AN ENTIRE YACHT. So why are the first few bodies found mostly intact, just a little bloodied? I kept expecting to learn that they’d been killed by a human murderer rather than by the monster, but no.

Finally, this book caused me to reflect on one of the pitfalls of writing fiction that’s so closely based on real-life events. In order to have plot twists, you have to make some changes to who the real baddies are. This can sit uneasily with the reader, though, when the analog of a real-world scoundrel turns out to be a decent dude, or when one of the villains is drawn from a group that was massively taken advantage of in reality.

Solstice didn’t turn out to be what I wanted, but I’m still in the market for a really good SFF music festival book. I think I’m going to check out Sarah Pinsker’s A Song for a New Day.

Published in February 2020. A music fest goes wrong in Lorence Alison’s comic YA thriller Solstice as selfie-mad concert-goers wake up to realize their tropical island fantasy is a deadly nightmare. When Adri is offered an all-expenses-paid trip to the exclusive Solstice Festival, she throws caution, her prestigious summer internship, and her parents goodwill to the wind. She just wants to live a little before the first day of the rest of her life, planned and scheduled in accordance with her parents’ law school dreams. But when she and a horde of affluent, entitled teen partiers arrive at the island paradise, it looks nothing like the luxury vacation they were promised. There’s barely any food, nowhere to stay, and not nearly enough porta-potties. Pretty soon, the festival is trending on social media for all the wrong reasons, and the music acts are cancelling left and right. And then the first dead body washes up on the beach. Adri has a front-row seat as everything devolves into chaos―and she’s in a prime position to put together the clues to who―or what―is killing off the helpless attendees. But even if she finds the killer, how can she hope to stop them? Check your privilege at the door―before it gets you killed. This is one vacation you can’t escape.

Author

  • Kelly Lasiter

    KELLY LASITER, with us since July 2008, is a mild-mannered academic administrative assistant by day, but at night she rules over a private empire of tottering bookshelves. Kelly is most fond of fantasy set in a historical setting (a la Jo Graham) or in a setting that echoes a real historical period (a la George RR Martin and Jacqueline Carey). She also enjoys urban fantasy and its close cousin, paranormal romance, though she believes these subgenres’ recent burst in popularity has resulted in an excess of dreck. She is a sucker for pretty prose (she majored in English, after all) and mythological themes.