SFINCS3 Review: The Drowned Heir by Jennifer Donohue
- Angela Boord
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
“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.
When her uncle dies at sea, a third child with no place in society undergoes a ceremony to house his spirit and take his role, diminishing the family’s loss. But her uncle’s spirit hasn’t settled the way it’s supposed to, and will not content itself with shore-bound business. Her uncle’s spirit insists, angrily, that it was not just a storm that killed him and wrecked his ship, not a rogue wave; it was an unthinkably large monster.
Then his lover comes knocking with news of an adult son who has set sail along the same shipping lane, and dead uncle and living niece must work together to save a son neither of them knew existed.
Review
The Drowned Heir has a fantastic premise and excellent world building, and I think it will have a lot of appeal for readers in search of gothic fantasy vibes. I definitely enjoyed the vibes, but in the end, I wished that more of the story's potential for complications had been exploited.
The novella begins with the MC being drowned so that her uncle, an important ship captain who had died suddenly without heirs, can be resurrected in her body. This, honestly, is a stop-you-in-your-tracks idea for a story; when my husband asked me what I was reading and I told him, it certainly stopped him.
We aren't really told how this happens; magic in The Drowned Heir is very soft, a matter of charms and potions, but it feels mysterious for the most part rather than vague or confusing. The world actually reminded me in some ways of a sort of mash up between Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy (without the liveships) and RJ Barker's The Bone Ships, if you threw in a healthy dose of moody gothic. And as The Drowned Heir spools out, maybe the main character’s uncle actually died because of a sea monster, which the main character will have to brave, because the captain's lover shows up, revealing the captain had a son after all--a son they will now have to save from the same monster that killed the captain.
I really loved all the elements of this story—a powerful middle-aged male sea captain and a young, woman discarded by her family forced to inhabit the same body; the captain's not-quite-human female lover though the unnamed MC prefers men; the ships; the sea monsters. But the narration felt emotionally distant to me. Partly this was not a bad thing; the use of first person present gave the narration a dreamlike quality that really built the story's atmosphere. But as the story went on, I kept wondering if things were ever not going to go according to plan, especially with all that juicy conflict built right into the idea. The potential for conflict seemed to simmer constantly below the surface but never erupted into full-blown complication. Even the battle scenes at sea felt curiously distant. I have to admit this was a little disappointing, because despite being a thorough landlubber, I love this sort of 17th-18th century-esque maritime fantasy and was looking forward to some of the heart-pounding sea-fighting scenes that seem to go along with this sub-genre.
This is why I think that vibe readers will really enjoy this story, because the vibes were definitely there. But as a fan of dark fantasy, I wanted Donohue to hit me harder. So, while I definitely enjoyed the story as it was told, there were also places where I got frustrated because it felt like there ought to be more meat on its bones. Specifically, the ending felt like it only resolved as a result of some hand-waving, which left me confused. I felt like I needed to go back through the book to figure out how exactly it had been set up.
But if Donohue ever decided to turn this novella into a full-length novel, I would buy it. The prose is some of the best I’ve read in this competition, her character work is top-notch, and the world is weird, dark, and compelling. If you like dark fantasy and you read for gothic atmosphere vibes, definitely give this one a try.