THE MONSTERS IN OUR SHADOWS, atmospheric horror/dystopia with a lot to say

THE MONSTERS IN OUR SHADOWS
EDWARD J. CEMBAL
Tempus Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: It’s been a century since “the great consumption.” Humanity has been devoured to the edge of extinction by the ever-ravenous Shivers – terrifying, shapeless creatures that latch onto their hosts, tormenting them over time before consuming them all at once. The last of civilization lives in the crumbling city of Atlas, where they subsist on processed insects and await their inevitable fate.

Anthem is the city Exilist, tasked with trapping the Shivers and banishing them to the malevolent Deadlands outside the city walls. But Anthem is ailing and destined to soon fall victim to his own Shiver, a fate he’s reluctantly accepted. As Anthem begins to withdraw from his world, a threat he’s unprepared for comes hurtling home. If he is to save anyone, he will have to travel into the Deadlands in search of a remedy to tame these creatures. But no Atlas dweller has ever made it back alive, and Anthem must confront his own darkness before humankind is forever lost to the monsters in our shadows.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I like horror stories about things I can believe exist, and the Shiver is one of those things. A thing unseen and unseeable to direct examination but real, and perceptible only obliquely? A thing that costs you huge energy to overcome the fear of, and ultimately it's most likely the thing that carries you off anyway?

Sounds like Life to me. Only this time it's seen from the widdershins view. No demons or supernatural gubbins or things from legend that don't exist. A real, demonstrably harmful...something...that we just don't understand. Like diseases we can't cure, conditions we can't treat, mental illnesses we refuse to look at.

Anthem, our PoV character, lives in Atlas, a walled city that's been erected to "protect" people yet it can't keep them safe from their Shiver. His job is to identify the threatened person's Shiver and get it corralled so he can take them both to the Deadlands outside Atlas's walls. He succeeds, he fails, but all he can do is treat the symptoms of the Shiver by ridding Atlas of the affected and their affliction. The drug that has prevented mass deaths is no longer effective, and Atlas needs a real solution...but where's it going to come from?

Atlas is under the control of a "savior" called The Architect whose walls have failed to keep out the Shiver, and whose claims to be the only one who can understand the Shiver and keep Atlas's people safe from it are wearing thin. The drug's no longer available and the price of cruelly exiling the sufferers to die outside Atlas is...well...distasteful. Anthem himself is now aware he needs to be exiled as his own Shiver is about to finish its ugly work.

The point of the story won't need belaboring, I trust, and the parallels won't need explication. The most effective part of the read is the sensory world Author Cembal evokes. The tense, paranoid, claustrophobic Atlas he creates is very effective. The way he adds sensory cues smalls and sights and sounds that get right to the emotional heart of the scene they're in...*chef's kiss*

I won't give the ending away. I will say that, by the end of the read, I felt I was rewarded by the story.