SFINCS Review: Sisters of Mercy by Yuval Kordov

“The Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship (SFINCS, pronounced “sphinx”)a 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.

Hannah-9 is a a child of Heaven and Hell, bred in the bowels of the Last City. Implanted into an ancient, nuclear-powered war machine—a God-engine—she stalks the wastes with Rachel-3, her sister-in-arms.

Their mandate is to wage war against the Adversary, to purify the Earth, and to endure—until the radiation consumes them.

This is her story.

A bold new novella from the creator of Dark Legacies.

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Review

Yuval Kordov's Dark Legacies series has been on my radar for a long time, so I was happy when Sisters of Mercy ended up in Team WIPs’ Round 2 allotment. I'm also happy to say that I wasn't disappointed.

Sisters of Mercy is a standalone prequel novella set in a post-apocalyptic North American prairie world where the landscape is terrorized by giant Cuthulu-esque horrors literally from Hell. Giant mechs called God-engines police these wastes, powered by a dedicated sisterhood raised to be symbionts for the machines, then sent to fight the beasts and to purify the land.

I was surprised at how powerfully emotional this relatively short novella was, especially given how much action is packed into it. It follows two characters--the new God-engine Hannah 9 and the much older engine, Rachel-3, to whom Hannah-9 has been bonded. Hannah-9 has only recently been a small, sickly human girl, but Rachel-3 has been performing her violent duties of justice, purification, and protection for many hundreds of years. Hannah-9, finally in possession of the power she's been raised to wield, tends to think in terms of wreaking vengeance. Rachel-3 seems worn out by all the vengeance she's wreaked, and is now in search of mercy, mortality, and hope.

The land itself also figures prominently in the narrative, as it has been crippled and mined by human willfulness and hatred in the World War that destroyed it. Kordov's love of the North American prairie comes out in his writing. His descriptions of the setting give the story a kind of brutal bleakness not unlike what the landscape has become in the novella. It’s hard to put this into words, but if you’ve ever visited the North American prairie lands—particularly to the north as they butt up against the eastern-facing Rockies—I think you’ll recognize that feeling in the story. In the Western landscape, big things can seem vanishingly small under the enormous expanse of sky, and I think Kordov does an excellent job of conveying that feeling, with two giant mechs wandering, mostly alone, through an empty, broken landscape.

Considering its subject matter, I think the story could have fallen into two traps: it could have been unremittingly bleak or it might have just turned into an action flick featuring giant mech battles. Sisters of Mercy manages to avoid both snares, though. Yes, it's a story about giant mechs battling enormous squid monsters in shattered badlands. But in the way the sisters care for each other, in their struggle to hold onto the best parts of their humanity as well as their belief that their actions will matter eventually--this is a deeply interior and emotional story. And I will admit that a certain paragraph at the end had me struggling not to burst into tears in a crowded room as it highlighted just how seemingly impossible their struggle was. And yet, I also felt like this was a deeply hopeful story. I think it will remain with me for a long time.

All right, so now I'm supposed to be a judge. I did have a couple of quibbles, which in the long run I feel don't really matter that much. There were moments, during action scenes, or when the characters themselves were disoriented where I felt a little over-disoriented. Sometimes I had to back up and re-read. In addition, I do wish Kordov had included some of the worldbuilding he mentions in the Acknowledgments section in the narrative itself, as it helped me understand a bit more about what was going on, including the history of the world. However, I don’t think these quibbles detract overmuch from the story. I was also curious but content to have some worldbuilding remain vague—for instance, the presence of "the humans", who are alternately portrayed as pests or wards the God-engines are designed to protect.

On the other hand, maybe the God-engines aren’t designed to protect anybody. I think that one of the larger themes running through the novella is: how does humanity deal with the consequences of this world-destroying war—a sin not just against other humans, or even against God, but against creation itself?

Sisters of Mercy is a really masterful book in my opinion. If you're a fan of mech battles,

post-apocalyptic science fiction, and you'd like all this wrapped up in a deeply emotional, character-driven narrative, I highly recommend Sisters of Mercy.