SFINCS Review: Residuum by DB Rook

“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.

Humanity is falling. She has little hope of survival.

Charlus Vaughn, a teenage refugee on the run from machine judgement and haunted by her mother's secrets. When a rogue data-pirate crew pulls her from the brink of execution, Charlus finds a place to belong, but something far older and far more dangerous is watching.

Entangled in the schemes of an ancient arachnid intelligence, Charlus begins to uncover powers within herself that unravel what she's been told.

Her past was hidden for a reason.

Humanity is losing its fight for dominance and the machines that hunt Charlus remember exactly who she is.

Residuum is a thrilling space opera of hidden legacies, AI genocide, and imperfect families, perfect for fans of sweeping galactic conflict, found-family crews, and slow-burn suspense.

Once Charlus learns who she is, the galaxy will know about it.

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Review

Residuum by DB Rook gave me strong Terminator vibes from the very beginning. While I felt like the novella diverged from those vibes as the story progressed, the action movie feeling never let go.

Teenage Charlus and her mother are trying to survive in a bleak, violent world where humans are tagged with chips that keep track of their sins. Killer robots are constantly on patrol as executioners of the “sinful”—presumably to make the world a kinder, happier place through extermination. As you might expect, this has created a hellish, apocalyptic environment in which the entire human population is being hunted and/or enslaved, and Charlus and her mother are constantly on the run.

I thought this bit of world building was incredibly cool. The idea that you could never outrun your sins felt like it had all kinds of creepy, horrible and thought-provoking possibilities and I was fully on board for that. I was also happy to see Merrian, a mother working hard and smart to keep her daughter alive. Mothers are rare POV characters in SFF, and I think this is what immediately put me in mind of Terminator. As a mother it was easy to connect with Merrian, and I'm sure this formed at least some of my hopes and expectations of where the story was going.

As the story continued, the action piled up along with the plot elements. A ragtag crew of misfit data pirates joined the cast, and I got a chuckle out of the ship's name (the MTV) and their quirky personalities. Then, in addition to the bots, space bugs entered the picture. I think it was at this point where I started to get confused, because the story seemed to want to veer off in two separate directions.

The action movie quality spilled over to the characters, too. I thought Rook did a great job of using action movie tropes in a fun way, giving the data pirates their own quirky personalities. But I did feel that with the focus very much on cinematic-style action, the emotional life of the characters was often glossed over too quickly.

To be fair, I don't watch action movies for the emotional life of the characters (does anyone?). Characterization and plot in that genre take a firm back seat to monster ass-kicking. So, I had to think pretty hard about why, as a reader rather than a viewer, I felt like I wanted more from the narrative here. I think it comes down to how stories are communicated in different media: in movies, dialogue and the actors’ body language do the heavy lifting in conveying emotion, but in books, with access to the characters’ inner thoughts, emotions, motivations, it can feel jarring when that response isn’t developed over a certain amount of time. In particular, it felt to me like Charlus trusted the MTV’s crew way too easily, especially after a certain crucial plot point which I thought deserved more pause than it got.

Overall, I ended up feeling like a lot of cool SF elements were stacked on top of each other, but that the story might have benefited from more cohesiveness and more space to develop the big ideas of the plot.

If you’re in the mood for an ass-kicking robot apocalypse x space bugs with non-stop action, you might want to check this one out. According to the author, Residuum is the first in a series of linked novellas, and I think this universe has a lot of potential for future exploration.

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