“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
Somehow, when I picked up Once We Flew, I wasn’t expecting a sci-fi, but sci-fi it is and I was thoroughly enchanted by author Nikky Lee’s rich and thoughtful worldbuilding, as well as the desert setting of Savene. With a clear voice right from the jump and a fascinating late-game reveal, it’s clear why Once We Flew is a finalist. Although I did have some quibbles, I have no hesitation recommending this one to sci-fi and fantasy fans alike (though it is absolutely firmly in the sci-fi camp, aspects of the world and narrative put me in mind of the work of R. B. Lemberg, and it will likely find some fans from amongst Lemberg’s readership).
The world in Once We Flew is a harsh and desolate one. Marsa, our protagonist, ekes out a meagre existence alongside fellow colonists on a desert planet that’s cursed her (and some of her people) with a devastating progressive illness. Although Marsa is gifted with psychic powers that allow her to hear the memories of those she touches (granting her the ability to absorb the knowledge of doctors from generations past), the cost is a painful crystalline growth making its way up her leg and to her hip. These cancerous crystals aren’t just a threat to Marsa, but to the whole community of survivors, despite that those cursed with them are graced with special abilities. When Marsa’s dying friend tasks her with a 
mission to travel the sands, Marsa doesn’t know what to think. Nonetheless, she can’t ignore her friend Zahra’s final wish, and pilots a sand-sail with Zahra’s son Koby in search of a truth she can’t see the shape of. With Koby now also suffering from the illness, the clock is ticking on both Marsa’s civilization, and her strongest emotional bond to her people.
Although early on there were some grammatical/tense issues and a few typos (easily ignored), I generally found the prose lovely. At times it felt LeGuinian, as did the sense of place and the thoughtfulness surrounding things like the culture of the world of Savene. It was easy for me to picture many of the more romantic features of the setting, such as Savene’s three moons and the seemingly endless dunes. Small details, like that Marsa’s people had once lived in or near the Sahara and that they maintained a dislike for cremation (cremation is haram in Islam) made the world feel grounded and its characters part of something larger than themselves. If it seems like I’m slipping between talking about the prose and the worldbuilding, I think that in itself should underscore that in OWF the two are very happily married. Everything Lee does here is in service to the greater story, yet doesn’t sacrifice style or beauty. Often for me, the sign of a truly excellent writer is when no individual part of a work can be excised from any other, and that’s very much the case here. There’s a sense that Lee’s understanding of the world, story, and writing are one and the same and that it was envisioned as a complete whole (rather than any particular aspect being treated as an afterthought). There was, all in all, an elegance to the writing, and Lee is undeniably a talented writer.
Character-wise, Marsa and Koby were both easily likeable protagonists. It’s a tight cast, and while it’s really Marsa’s book, I want to highlight how impressed I was by Lee’s ability to make me care about several off-page characters who we see only through Marsa’s visions. Although sometimes there could have been more clarity in the vision passages to really emphasize that what we’re witnessing is a collapse of Marsa’s sense of self into the memories of the dead (rather than pronoun confusion), when a few late-book characters are introduced at the very end they were incredibly vivid and immediately hooked me emotionally. Throughout OWF, I felt for both Marsa (whose chronic, progressive illness was superbly handled) and for Koby (loveable and intelligent, though with a youthful naivety and earnestness). As previously mentioned, Marsa’s voice is very strong, helped by the competent first-person narration. Although I’m always excited to see an “older” protagonist, I wasn’t entirely convinced by this aspect of Marsa, who read as fairly young to me (outside what we’re told by the text), and this is one area where the voice perhaps didn’t quite match the intention (but might equally speak to the strength of Marsa as a character, in that she seemed very eager to be who she was, no matter whether it fit the expectations of author or audience).
When I was a child, my mother made up fairy tales of a three-eyed snake who circled the planet and watched over us. People told stories back then, back when they had hope.
One thing that’s worth noting about OWF is that it’s a fairly dense novella, and felt a little structurally and developmentally unbalanced. Although there was a texture to the first three quarters, I found myself mentally drifting with some frequency, with the cool worldbuilding not quite enough on its own to pull me back. What did jolt me out of this sensation was the aforementioned reveal late in the story, which added an exciting new narrative element and increased both the stakes and the sense of pathos I felt for the characters (and world) writ large. Although some aspects of the reveal remained a little too murky for me, it presented a fascinating puzzle that had its own emotional pull. After this discovery on Marsa’s part, however, the rest of the plot resolved itself a little too quickly. I would have liked to have seen some judicious trimming in those first three quarters, where the vagueness of Zahra’s dying wish wasn’t quite enough to sustain or justify the density of the text. Had the reveal come a little sooner, the aftermath of the new information Marsa, Koby, and the reader learned would have had more room to breathe.
If it seems as though my review is a little harsh, it’s actually because OWF is so close to a perfect novella, and so the issues I had stick out to me as I reflect on it. There’s so very much that Lee does exceptionally well, and with some quite simple tweaks I think I would have flown through it and rated it an easy five stars (ten in the context of SFINCS). The worldbuilding, the concept, and the characters are all ideal for a novella-length work, and there’s so much cleverness to what Lee sets up. Nikky Lee is an author to watch, and OWF is a novella I can recommend to sci-fans (particularly of desert, sci-fi settings) the post-apocalyptic but living world of the Horizon videogames, and R. B. Lemberg.
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