SFINCS3 Review: Reap, Sow by S.H. Cooper

“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.

We're now in Phase 3 of the SFINCS competition: the finals! There's no more elimination in this phase; the ten books in this phase were chosen out of the original hundred and made it to the end! In Phase 3, they'll all be ranked by score until eventually one book comes out on top.

Note: The following review contains only my personal thoughts as a judge and does not reflect the views of the team as a whole.

The halls are familiar. Lucianne "Lucky" Boyle knows that much. But how she came to be in this strange place that tries to make itself look like home is a mystery. Filled with doors that have no handles, rooms that shift to almost familiar, and faceless people in blue, Lucky is determined to find a way out to get back to her family and the man she loves. Until her family starts to show up, one by one, to lead her down a dark and twisted path that ends in a terrible truth.

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Review

Reap, Sow is a short, solid horror story with some nicely creepy imagery. But in the end, it left me feeling a little flat. I think this was because I never really felt like I was that emotionally invested in the MC and because I guessed the hidden frame for the story almost immediately.

Lucianne (also known as “Lucky”) wakes up in a strange old house with no memory of how she got there. All she wants is to find a way out, back to her family and her boyfriend. But the house has other ideas. Luci keeps running into nightmares involving her family—nightmares that bring her, inch by inch, closer to a horrible truth.

First of all, props to the author for pulling off amnesia. It is really difficult to write a character who has lost their memory and awakens in strange circumstances. I thought the author did a decent job of this, never allowing the disorientation to become too disorienting.

It is a hard way to begin when the reader doesn’t have any connection to the main character yet, though. The emotional distance remained for me throughout the story, in a way I’m having a hard time articulating. I feel like horror often situates the reader on the outside so that they can look in on the train wreck unfolding without necessarily being part of it. But I felt like the characters in Reap, Sow remained types much more than becoming individuals with the quirks, idiosyncrasies, etc. of real people. This limited the amount of dread I felt as we crept closer to the end.

On the other hand, I think readers who enjoy idea-driven short horror will really like this one. It was clearly a story built around the twist as the main character finally regains her memories. I didn't guess the twist, but because I wasn’t as emotionally invested in the characters, it didn't hit me as hard as it might have. Don’t get me wrong; the ending was pretty horrible, definitely befitting a psychological horror story, and the pacing was also excellent, spooling information out at exactly the right moments. I think maybe this story is just a tougher sell to a character reader like me.

If you’re in the mood for a short, well-paced psychological horror story, give this one a shot!

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