Review: Stargazers by L.P. Hernandez

 

What started as a forum post entitled, “My Neighbor Has Been Staring at the Moon for Hours,” was    dismissed as a sci-fi story shared in the wrong forum. Soon other members of the forum began sharing their own experiences corroborating what the original poster described: people standing statute still for hours on end fixated on the moon above. When the sun rises, the Stargazers are no longer themselves and are set on an unknown course to destroy both civilization and humankind.

While used to this level of destruction and carnage are common in war zones, former soldier with PTSD and now family-man Henry Sylva never expected to have to face it on the home front. Now Henry and his family gather what supplies they can and set out to escape the city crumbling around them. When tragedy hits, Henry must rely on his survival skills to keep his family safe from both the Stargazers and the human monsters around them. 

 I am a HUGE fan of dystopian and epistolary fiction.  In 120 short pages, LP Hernandez has deftly built a story from a single fantastical forum post about the odd behavior of someone’s neighbor to b the survival of this family during a complete societal breakdown.  I love the way the chapters alternated back and forth between the plight of the Sylva family and the posts on the Reddit-like forum, reading how the world is breaking down outside the scope of the Sylva family.

This is a gorgeous, gut punch of a story. Hands down my favorite novella of 2022 so far. Very much looking forward to further stories from the My Dark Library collection as they come out.

5/5 Stars

Thanks to Cemetery Gates Publishing for providing me with a review copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions of this work are my own.