“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.
REVIEW
Oksy, Come Home is the second book I’ve read by Phil Williams. The first, Dyer Street Punk Witches, I enjoyed as part of my positivity reads for SPFBO9. Although I was impressed by DSPW, which I felt demonstrated very clearly Williams’s skill as a writer and his taut narrative style, OCH was, for me, a showcase of how much those same skills and that same style have developed. Authorial voice is one of those things that can take years and years to hone, and often distinguishes a truly talented (but beginner) author from more experienced writers who may be more confident in how they express themselves and their ideas.* OCH is undeniably one of those mature stories, in the sense that I was able to recognize Williams’s authorial voice in the prose and approach to plot, but that there was also a lot of room given for OCH to breathe freely as its own work with its own setting. A very worthy finalist with something to say and a clear sense of how to say it.
A companion novella to Williams’s military fantasy and SPFBOX Senlin pick, However Many Must Die, OCH focuses on the story of the titular Oksy (called Okselle by her family in the chapters’ epigraphs). Oksy is a recent recruit in a military conflict that bears some resemblance to WWI and WWII. A crack-shot sniper, Oksy is one of the army’s most underused (and underappreciated) assets, and due to her gender she’s frequently the butt of misogynistic jokes and sexist microaggressions. OCH‘s plot is very character-focused in that, while there’s a satisfying amount of action that should appeal to military fantasy fans, what propels the story is less the shifting frontline (which one gets the feeling creeps, incrementally, back and forth between the two sides), and moreso Oksy coming into her own as she navigates constant attacks on her competence. A secondary, though I’d argue much deeper, storyline involves discovering the story of why Oksy enlisted to begin with, which is revealed gradually to the reader through the letters that form the book’s epigraphs. The resolution to this small mystery is suitably gutting and frustrating (it should feel frustrating), and is very well handled by Williams.
That said, OCH isn’t what most people would expect when they hear “character piece.” For all that Oksy takes centre stage, Williams’s style is punchy, immediate, and not much interested in character interiority. Though this will certainly affect which readers become fans, it’s not a criticism of the work itself, but a description of the type of book that it is. The choice to write OCH in this style feels part and parcel to me with the choice to write about war at all. There’s an unpretentious grittiness (which I would very much contrast against the self-conscious grittiness you often see in so-called dark fantasy), that doesn’t underlie the text so much as seep through every bullet hole riddling the page. Like Oksy, we’re deep in it, and “it” here is the belly of a painful and seemingly endless martial conflict. There’s simply no time to dwell too much on 
anything but immediate necessity when the other side is summoning earthquakes capable of hurling whole buildings onto your platoon (not to mention the existence of something called a “land kraken”!).
I’m not very well read in the military fantasy subgenre, but it seems to me that Williams is bringing something very new and meaningful to the table with his approach. While there’s absolutely no shortage of action (OCH is pulse-pounding and relentless), the work is uninterested in being the written equivalent of a Michael Bay blockbuster. Its approach to war and conflict is somehow both explosive and understated–violence here is presented as drudging, mundane, and repetitive. It’s remarkable given the presence of mages, magic, and mythical beasts, that the word that most comes to mind when I reflect on my reading experience is “realism.” Williams is actively using fantasy to talk about warfare, rather than using warfare as a vehicle to depict fantasy.
The writing throughout is highly competent and very well edited. It wasn’t ever hard for me to follow or read, and dialogue felt natural and buoyant. OCH isn’t a book I’d recommend anyone read for the prose, in the sense that flashiness here would undermine the very thing it seems Williams is aiming to achieve, but it’s undeniable that the prose is strong.
If OCH falters at all, it’s perhaps along two axes: 1) some readers may be frustrated that we’re plunked into a martial conflict we’re not given much information about, and 2) the end was a little abrupt and could have used a little more weight to draw the whole work together (that said, the final combat scene we’re treated to was one of my favourites from the novella)! Personally, I didn’t take issue with the first thing, since it underscored that, to some degree, the start of long conflicts often becomes obscure and irrelevant the further from the initiating spark we become, and because it helped me to feel more immersed in Oksy’s immediate situation. The second was a more significant issue to me, and speaks, perhaps, to the fact that the work was intended as a companion piece to However Many Must Die.
Overall, OCH is a solid piece of writing that I feel speaks very subtly to the futility of war by building its themes into its structure, prose, and story. It’s also a work that puts front-and-centre a feminist narrative that expresses through this fictional conflict the ways in which real-world women in many spheres of employment are denied promotion, opportunity, and respect by those in power. Oksy, Come Home is a novella I can easily recommend to fans of military fantasy.
*Certainly, this is not always the case, and some authors have a very clear point of view, style, and voice right from the get-go. Typically though, in these cases, the author is someone who may have writing experience they’re able to draw on from other contexts.
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