The Helios Syndrome

by Vivian Shaw

When Devin Stacy, a freelance necromancer, though the National Transportation Safety Board considers him an insightful contingency communication specialist, investigates a plane gone missing under weird circumstances, he finds himself haunted by a dead pilot. Can Stacy figure out the mysteries of both the ghost and disappearance before another flight full of passengers faces peril? Vivian Shaw's new novella offers thrills and chills, cinematic and necromantic.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Novella, Paranormal, Fiction, Science Fiction, Mystery

136 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2023

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

An absolute delight of a novella. Our narrator Stacy is a necromancer working for the body that investigates airplane crashes (genius premise), haunted by a ghost of a captain who died in a mysterious crash, and drawn in to an escalating series of mysterious incidents. The plot is lovely and just the right level of complexity for the length with everything nicely woven in, the atmosphere is beautifully done, the writing cinematic, and the concept elegantly developed and proper scary. Terrific. If I had a quibble, I'd have liked the super-understated romance to be just a tad more stated, but that's really because I liked the characters so much, I wanted more. Very highly recommended.

[Teal]

I'm giving up at 30% because I can't stand the narrative voice.

A glib, smart-alecky 1st-person male character who the author tries (but fails) to portray as cool and funny was the default narrator in many of the hundreds of science fiction short stories from the 1950s and 60s that I read while growing up. Because of that it feels stale to me, generic. Not to mention it keeps giving me unwelcome flashbacks. Those with a different reading history will react differently, as you can see from the glowing reviews from people who are not me.

[Iona Sharma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love it love it love it. A freelance necromancer in the employ of the NTSB, otherwise the US equivalent of the Air Accident Investigation Board! Devin Stacy, our narrator, teams up with his fabulous asshole investigator counterpart, they try and solve the mysteries behind air crashes, and also creepy ghostly shit keeps happening, and I LOVE IT it's all I want. The very low-key romance got me where I live, too. Just perfect. And I had wondered if the Helios in the title referred to the real-life Helios "ghost plane" incident, and it does, and I'm so happy.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually tried reading this book on a plane, I do not recommend it.

Excellent story with mysterious forces messing with planes, a ghost pilot, a necromancer who uses a crystal ball, and government agencies. It felt like the opening of a series? I hope so. I'd read more.

[Roslyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 instead of 5, only because the narrative voice irritated me a little. Loved the characters - and I want to see more of them, as well as the budding romance - and the dark fantasy feel. I worried a little that it might trip over into true horror (not my favourite genre) and it is horrific at times, but it didn't turn into really creepy horror for me (but I'm a wuss).

I read this because I loved Vivian Shaw's Dr Greta Helsing series and I hadn't written anything else by the author. This was very different in voice and tone from the Helsing books, and I enjoyed it very much. I wonder if there'll be more with these characters ...

[Tory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hello the little SPRINKLING of romance possibility tossed in on the last page??? PLEASE turn this novella into a series, I loved the world and the character's voices. Speculative fiction, very light on the speculative but just enough magic and mysteriousness to spice things up. I'll be looking for more by this author for sure.

[Spad53 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well this was a pleasant surprise, a horror adventure about aviation. Don’t read this if you’re scared of flying, read the Greta Helsing series instead, but if you’re like me and love flying, this is wonderful.

Of course being Vivian Shaw it’s very well written, and even made my eyes damp, which only happens on really good books. It’s exciting, interesting and I loved it. It’s not necessary to be interested in flying; it’s such a good story anyway.

There is mention of a slide-slip, and I know very well what that is, I once did one myself by mistake. My instructor was a bit surprised when I crossed the controls, he thought I knew what I was doing, and luckily he took over and sorted us out. Slipping is well explained here.

Vivian Shaw wrote thus, in this book:
“My flying instructor keeps saying she doesn’t get how I know half the shit I come up with, and I keep telling her a guy has to keep some secrets, doesn’t he?”

And I also wondered how she knows so much about commercial aviation, the Boeing 737-700 in particular. The answer is here https://www.vivianshaw.net/blog/2018/...

And a very well done to Vivian Shaw, this was spotlessly good research.

Here’s an old photo of a Boeing 737 landing in Rio.
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[mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a shame that I feel I have to give this book 2 stars - the idea (a freelance necromancer on the NTSB payroll) was good and was right up my Dresden-Files-loving-alley but the execution just did not work for me.

First of all, the italics used in the book were just completely out of control. Kinda like in my opening paragraph. The following is an excerpt with italics true to the book. I understand italicizing to emphasize and italicizing to indicate internal thoughts, but this, to me, is excessive. And I swear there is not a single page in this book without two words italicized. I'm not going back and checking though.

Dooley is still on the phone, bless him, and I pick it up in shaking fingers and cut him off in mid-exposition.
"Dools," I say. "I know what has to happen. I know what we have to do."
"What the fuck are you talking about, we," Dooley demands. His voice has a weird wavering high note in it I don't remember hearing before. It's almost interesting , or it would be if I didn't feel so deadly fucking sick and scared and tired.
"Not you," I qualify, thinking again stapled, thinking linked. "But I think I do have to."
"Do what?"

I get it, the italics might be nitpicky. But for me it was just one more issue I had and frankly the easiest and quickest for me to point to in this evolving rant.

A more appropriate criticism and arguably a larger issue (although overusing italics is apparently a trigger for me) is that the narrative voice is annoying. Teal, another reviewer, made the comment "A glib, smart-alecky 1st-person male character who the author tries (but fails) to portray as cool and funny was the default narrator..." and I just can not help but emphasize how much the author failed in the attempt. The narrator wasn't the smart-alecky friend you roll your eyes at. The narrator was the person you stop inviting over because they're so annoyingly not funny (or cool). Is that harsh? That feels harsh. But true.

My last issue is going to be entirely hidden behind spoiler tags because it's a MAJOR SPOILER. I stuck with the damn book because a) it was short and b) despite how annoying both the writing (italics) and the narrative voice were I was invested in learning what happened to the Boeing/FedEx 737 flight at the bottom of the Pacific. We never do. In fact, somewhere around halfway through writing this, I think Shaw realized that they didn't know what happened themselves and decided to switch veins and pursue a new mystery. For which we also don't actually get a resolution. We also don't get a resolution to a third mystery that was referenced many times (what actually happened to ghost friends flight?). This entire novella was an exercise in cliff hangers. And this is perhaps my biggest issue and biggest annoyance. By the end of the 130 page book we have 3 (maybe 4) loosely connected "mysteries" that Shaw has laid out for us, and maybe this will be a series and the cliff hangers are intended to hook me...but I don't particularly care to find out anymore.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

In love with this. A mix of OG Twilight Zone, a dash of John Dies at the End, fantastic writing, eerie scenes. I read this at work and was haunted (no pun intended) by some events.

I would read more books set in this universe, definitely. ❤️

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A necromancer is hired to investigate an air crash.

Shaw's weird little ghost story is confusing, but in a very good way. The looping of the story is interesting and the characters are (for all their strangeness) relatable.

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mysterious plane crash. A rogue plane in flight. A necromancer employed by the NTSB to merge himself with disaster scenes.
[The Helios syndrome is a real phenomenon based on an actual crash...I won't spoil it.]
Devin Stacy is the necromancer. He is employed as a "consultant" by the NTSB to investigate crash scenes that would be inaccessible to anyone without his talents. Through a crystal ball, he can access crash scenes underwater, his most recent investigation being a FedEx 737 under two miles of ocean.
In his waking hours, he is haunted by the captain of a crash he investigated over a year ago. In his dreaming hours, he is haunted by a talking 747 (yes, you read that right).
All the pieces come together when a 737 loaded with passengers goes rogue. Can Devin save them before something disastrous happens?
Another breath of fresh air at under 100 pages!

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

THAT WAS SO GOOD! I’m so glad Vivian Shaw is back! This was creepy and funny and utterly immersive read. I loved both Stacy and Dooley and I really hope that Shaw will revisit this universe and their partnership! I’m giving it all the stars (and I don’t usually like novellas). Go read it now!

[Lukasz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick and entertaining read.

I appreciated Shaw's writing style and the engaging central mystery. However, some of the tension was diluted by the technical minutiae. Kudos for the thorough research and context provided, but I think I could do with less of it :)

[Kat Ficalora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vivian Shaw writes a paranormal universe more brilliantly than I've ever read elsewhere. Should I ever gain access to unlimited funds, I am commissioning a Feige-style MCU from her.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but in dire need of editing and polishing | Lethe Press is a tiny publishing imprint for lgbtq books, particularly in the spec-fic realm. When I say tiny, I believe there are fewer than a dozen employees, which makes this book practically self-published, and it really shows. There are all the usual editing issues, word choices that land strangely enough to make you stop and re-read the sentence three or four times, typos, about two hundred irritating and unnecessary italics, etc. But there's also the fundamental issue of our protagonist. Devin Stacy has attitude instead of personality or character, and Devin Stacy at no point felt male. The entire book I had to keep actively reminding myself that he was supposed to be male, because he read entirely as a lesbian I would avoid running into at the grocery store. The excessive nicknames for Dooley, the responding "yo" when spoken to by name, everything about Stacy was eye-rolling. But also, just didn't feel like a guy. I love Shaw's other work, and I recommend it regularly, but this needed more eyes on it before publication.

[e · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice little self-contained slice of a larger world

[magdalene · Rating 3 out of 5]

decent enough. gets exciting if you read it on a plane

[Sharade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this novella but i don't think I'll ever be at ease in an airplane again.

[空 · Rating 2 out of 5]

bright side:

1. Shaw didn’t force the relationship which was nowhere near existence, although she ~*dropped some ~~•°hints°• from Stacy’s POV.

2. Kiiiinda interesting and there were some freaky bits that are fun to ponder: the Patient One and the Smiling One.

3. I liked that one scene where Stacy disappeared then reappeared drenched in salt water

4. Thanks, creepy pilot ghost!

5. At least the protagonist doesn’t go into raptures about his Steel Blue Eyes, his Lithe Figure, his Bubble Butt... you think I’m joking but so many fucking authors now have first person perspective protags describe their own 9/10 Lewks and lbr only ABSOLUTE PSYCHOPATHS and BADLY AUTHORED CHARACTERS talk about themselves that way.

dimmer side:

◈ Ahhh ... the millennial dream of a smartaleck protagonist lives. Even though Stacy himself doesn’t have a lot of good comebacks, he somehow thinks of himself as a font of snappy one-liners, and that’s just pure millennial delusion, a holdover from Buffy-the-Vampire-Slayeritis.

◈ This is really more the beginning concept of a series than any kind of serious book, imho. Fun enough to contemplate, but there’s a lot left to question. How exactly do these powers work, what are these mysterious entities that seem to have appeared recently, have others encountered them ... ? But it also doesn’t seem as if we’ll be getting into that (there are no clues), so might they be addressed in these theoretical future instalments?

◈ Instead of trying to give me visuals for Dooley, for some reason Shaw described him as “Mayhem from the Allstar commercials.”

BRO WHO THE FUQQQ IS THAT I’M NOT AMERICAN BRO WHY WD U MAKE ME GOOGLE JUST TO IMAGINE UR CHARACTER BRO pls bro just describe him bruh pls. This is bad enough for me to skip leg day bro my gains

Also bro sorry but that Allstar Mayhem guy is not ... hot for me. Just describe him pls and I’ll imagine him as what is appealing to me

◈ Anyway, the real question is: would I buy the second book if there were one?

And the real answer is: probably not because I’m not super intrigued, either in the characters or the plot.

▥▥▥

EDIT maybe 3 minutes after I originally posted this review: OMFG WAIT SHAW WAS THE ONE WHO WROTE THAT VAN HELSING BS AHAHAHAHAH

yeah no I’m not buying a 2nd book even if there were one no thanks have a nice day you too bye bye

[N.N. Heaven · Rating 5 out of 5]

From page one to the end, simply the finest book of the year. This is the book of the decade. Pity the foolish publishing company who let this genius go. Mega credit to Lethe Press for picking up a talent of such magnitude.

I was enthralled, captivated, and titillated by this work. The character of Devin is simply superb. The subtle humor simply had me guffawing constantly. The cultural references are spot-on perfect for this reader.

I personally consider the late J.N. Williamson one of the great horror authors of all time. This book could sit on my bookshelf next to his work. Vivian Shaw has penned one of the greatest supernatural stories of the 21st century and must be considered as one of the best of all time.

If it was possible, I would give this book 6 stars out of 5. It is 5++++++ stars. The flow is so smooth that the reader is just swept up in this story. The plot is original and incredible. The secondary characters are so strong that spin-off books could be focused on them.

It was truly a personal pleasure to read this book. I must own a print copy of this work. This will be a new addition to my yearly re-reads. Simply one of the finest and most enjoyable books I have ever read. If you only have enough money to buy one book this year, buy this one. You will be completely fulfilled and happy if this is the only book you read this year. A runaway book of the year. Simply a brilliant book.

Disclaimer: I received a copy from the publisher in the hopes I'd review it.

My Rating: 5+++++++ stars

Reviewed by: Mr. N

This review first appeared: https://www.nnlightsbookheaven.com/po...

[Barbara Grant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting premise, but full of holes

I like the protagonist and the concept. The resolution requires 3 device jumps I could not follow. SpoilerSSSSS:

1. The concept of big sky, small aircraft is ignored. A single ghost plane with a working transponder causes 3 separate near mid-airs during a few hours of flight when it pops into reality. Apparently ATC just watches that happen.
2. The Air Force is able to zip line a specialist and supervisor into the ghost plane to land it, so they send NOT a qualified, trained special forces pilot for this "we only get one shot at this" operation, but a psychic who is pretty sure he can follow the directions of the so-far totally silent ghost pilot that has been haunting him. And
3. They also send the psychic consultant's NTSB boss, not because he is in any way qualified to land a plane, but because he is just so darned stubborn and conscientious.
The magic stuff I can follow and I find interesting enough to want more, but Shaw really messes up the mundane aspects. Without some kind of internal logic, the fun parts feel totally untethered. It needs a do-over.

[Venneh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun read from the library - a necromancer employed by the FAA is called out to to the field. Normally he's dealing with a complete loss of life and only scraps, and we get an example of that, but then a new situation with an appearing and disappearing plane with humans on it pops up, and our main has to figure out how to deal with that, and the ghost of a pilot that's been haunting him for a while. This has the air of a radio show from the 30s blended with the down and gritty of someone who has one hundred percent worked for the government. Reading this in spring 2025 has been a hell of a thing, because you wonder if this wouldn't help with all the plane crashes because we decided to fire air traffic controllers for no goddamn reason, but who fucking knows anymore. (I promise this is a positive ending!)

[Dakota Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5. I liked this story a lot. But it was frustrating at times due to what it could have been. The premise is absolutely fantastic.

*Spoilers*

This would have been an amazing cosmic horror story that could have been second to none, but Shaw kept skirting the sides of true cosmic horror and ultimately left 4 mysteries unsolved. First, what happened to Warner’s flight? Second, what happened to the FedEx flight? Third, what happened to the AirBright flight? Fourth, who was the benevolent 737 dream airplane teacher (what an amazing sentence to type)?

It’s a fun story overall, but it kills me for what it could have been.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I DEVOURED Ms. Shaw's Strange Practice trilogy when I discovered it (I'm a veterinarian with a taste for the macabre, so it was perfect for me), so when I saw she had a new book out I grabbed it.

I can't even imagine the amount of research that went into this book. But I didn't love it. I felt like I didn't really understand what the syndrome was, what it's cause was, was it in fact related to all the different events talked about? The idea of a psychic assisting the NTSB is intriguing, but maybe TOO MUCH effort was put into the technical aspects and not effort into the actual storyline.

Regardless, I will read more by Vivian Shaw.

[JadeiteStone · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was pretty fun overall. The narrator has a sarcastic and witty voice, which can at times come off as a bit overly quirky. I enjoyed it cause I tend to enjoy that kind of narration, but beware of it. The entire novel has references and talks about planes and their functions seeing as this is literally a book about a plane going missing, and I got a little glassy-eyed during those segments. But the story is interesting enough to keep you wanting to know more and discover why Warner is haunting our freelance necromancer. Also! There's a wisp, literally only a whisper of romance in this which I wish would have been further developed.

[Jeremy Preacher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect little anxiety-spiral of a novella. The concept - "necromancer freelances for the National Transportation Safety Board" - is flawless, Devin Stacy is exactly the right balance of gruff and tired and secretly compassionate, and even though I spent the whole thing trying to guess the ending, I did not see it coming and it was absolutely flawless. Strongly recommend that if you pick this up, or want to, go read the related short story.

[Mrs Georgina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please give this a go

I read a lot. It isn't often I am gripped by excitement and joyful anticipation when I start to get into a story but I really was by this one. I honestly haven't read anything else like this - great characterisation, great mix of science, technology and magic but all grounded in "now". I hope it won't be a one off (I'd love to meet these characters again) but it is complete in itself and comes to a satisfactory conclusion. I loved it, please give it a go.

[ily · Rating 2 out of 5]

An intriguing bout of paranormal sci-fi that involves a necromancer solving plane crashes for the US government. I wasn’t that ‘into’ the book at first because of the narrative voice - an “I bet you’re wondering how I ended up here,” couldn’t-care-less-type named Devin Stacy, replete with an onslaught of pop cultural references that feel meaningless. The book is, however, inspired by the real life plane crash of Helios Airways flight 522 in 2005, and this historical anchor plus the novella length is what kept me reading.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could easily see this becoming a series, like so many other detective stories! There are mysteries left unsolved, after all, and we've barely scratched the surface. I kind of wish the book had included the original short story too, or at least a link to it, because I think it really adds to the atmosphere of just how gut-wrenchingly *wrong* the previous crash was.
(Also: yay for the return of the air crash investigators tumblr, in a wildly unexpected format!)

[Andrés Menéndez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fantastic novella that I couldn't put down until I finished it! I enjoyed the protagonist and the supportive characters, their interactions while trying to discover the truth behind the mystery of the missing plane were some of the best parts of the book. The pacing is perfect and it helps to explore different aspects of the necromancer, the ghost haunting him, and how all is connected to their current case, and the ending ties everything up in a satisfying way. I recommend it!