“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.
REVIEW
The Devil Owns Primetime by Sirius . is another novella I’ve had on my personal TBR for a while. With its powerful character voice, fantastic sense of the archetypes it’s playing with, and its unflinching emotional horrors, it did not disappoint. Unfortunately, a lackluster ending did the strength of the novella a disservice, not quite living up to the depth of the rest of the work. The Devil Owns Primetime is unafraid to go to some truly horrific places, and outside its ending it was a judge favourite not only for me, but for the team as a whole. I wholeheartedly recommend trying it out. Sirius . is an author operating at the peak of their game–this is someone who can write. Devil is specific, boldly showcases 
character and authorial voice, and you’re unlikely to mistake it for the work of another author. In particular, horror fans who love an unlikeable, deeply flawed protagonist, strong character voice, and a grotesquerie that underscores more emotional scares, will find a lot to love here.
Devil is all about character, and Josiah is a character. A morally bankrupt televangelist for a successful American megachurch in Texas, Josiah hasn’t just metaphorically sold his soul to achieve wealth and fame–he’s literally done so. As Josiah juggles a toxic relationship with his chronically mistreated, clandestine boyfriend, Theo; an affair with his beautiful assistant, Polly; and rising tensions at the religious network famous for his show; the devil finally comes to collect, revealing to Josiah that there may be some things he cares about more than money after all. A work of religious horror, Devil doesn’t skimp on the gruesome detail, nor on Josiah’s graphic sexual encounters. His inner and outer worlds are tormented to say the least, and while some later reveals to do with Josiah’s background and past deepen and complicate the audience’s relationship with him, Sirius . is uncompromising in his characterization of Josiah as an ultimately vacuous, shallow person, whose use of others is primarily instrumental. It’s very finely done character work, and it undergirds all aspects of the story.
Typically I organize my reviews in a fairly predictable way, with paragraphs dedicated to plot summary, character, prose, and maybe theme or structure. Sirius . makes this challenging in the most delightful ways, for the simple reason that so many of these elements are inextricable from one another. The prose is so intimately dictated by character that it’s hopeless to talk about one and not the other, and in a major way that’s untrue of many works claiming to be character-focused, Devil is genuinely that. That said, it’s worth highlighting how smooth a read the novella is. It’s easy to turn one more page, and it’s deliciously simple to sink inside the book and forget that it’s a constructed thing. While there’s an occasionally awkward or stilted line–notable largely in one particular chapter later in the book, and mostly in the dialogue between Josiah and Theo–Devil is clearly a meticulously written and edited work. Voice dominates but does not interfere with clarity or become repetitive. Due to the intensity of the marriage between character and prose, along with Josiah’s unlikeability, however, it’s unlikely Devil will be for everyone. That said, I’m generally a believer that the best books rarely are. Sirius . paints a precise and visceral portrait of a corrupt and decadent commercial landscape, deftly eviscerating the greed behind celebrity megapreachers and their churches while addressing the ways in which the disenfranchised are so often encouraged and coerced into limiting their desires to those things which help sustain the social powers of oppression.
“‘Do you remember who your viewers are, Jo? Old women who want to suck on Nixon’s tits and Korean War vets. And none of that pansy-ass antiwar bullshit you were spewing the other week is going to fly with them. You could hand them a load of steaming shit and tell them to clap their hands in praise and they’d do it, but not if you make yourself look like a goddamn hippie.’”
Ever since I heard George R. R. Martin describe characterization as an “unfolding” rather than a development, I’ve always been a fan of that framing and approach. The idea that characters should display an easily demarcated development (shallow to deep, foolish to wise, ambitious to humble, kind to asshole, etc) is one that’s always struck me as simplistic. Humans generally don’t tend to be so straightforward, and the vocabulary of unfolding, with its implications of something that emerges, ebbs, reveals, discloses, and occludes itself seems to me to capture much more readily the experience of being human. We change–of course we do–but so much of that change manifests through a process of what feels like realization, and, barring severe circumstances, most changes are very gradual. The pressure for characterization to take the form of an immediate, measurable, and obvious shift is one that bothers me. All that to say, Sirius . is great at unfolding character. Devil is less about Josiah changing (we hope that he will, even as deep down I think we sense that he can’t or won’t), but what we get instead is a peeling of his emotional and historical layers. Secondary characters are less a focus in Devil, but it isn’t an issue. Theo and Polly are both as well-drawn as they need to be, viewed as they are from Josiah’s perspective. Despite that, both emerge as sympathetic, and Polly in particular has an emotional resonance that compelled me and which works to deepen one of the hardest-hitting emotional scenes in the novella. In most ways, however, Theo and Polly exist to showcase the various ways in which Josiah is imprisoned by (and has given himself over to) an intrinsically unjust, perpetually hedonistic and materialistic system. That Josiah occasionally demonstrates glimmers of empathy–particularly for Polly–emphasizes rather than negates the ways in which his heart beats in time with that system.
As previously mentioned, where Devil falters is unfortunately in its ending. Without spoiling anything specific, there’s certainly no shortage of spectacle to Devil‘s conclusion, and the erotic horror element that remains a constant throughout the narrative continues in its final pages. Compared with the careful layering of earlier chapters, however, our final moments with Josiah feel a little too easy, a little too like an authorial shrug. In conversation with my fellow judges, one of them called it “desolate,” and we both found ourselves agreeing that a desolate ending works perfectly well for this specific story, but that the execution of it doesn’t quite achieve the emotional slap it seems to be going for. Because the erotic is such a huge part of the story, I want to emphasize that it’s not that the work incorporates graphic sex at its conclusion that I find to be a problem, so much as that here it feels out of place yet repetitive, rehashing aspects of Josiah’s situation we already know to be true. Elements of the conclusion feel quite random compared with the precision of before. An ending in which we’re shown that Josiah continues on as he did, abusing and mistreating newcomers to his social circle, would have felt in-keeping with the disappointment of a person that Sirius . has expertly crafted, as well as what the novel seems to be saying about real-world, metaphorical Faustian bargains–that they’re an ongoing process that we choose every day and are fully complicit in. What we get instead is an ending that’s a little all over the place thematically. That said, Devil is a memorable book and I enjoyed my time with it. The high praise I’ve given it elsewhere in this review will hopefully communicate the strength of Sirius .’s writing and help Devil (and Sirius .) find new readers. I know I’ll be reading more from this author.
Sometimes you pick up a work and you can immediately tell an author has it–that nebulous quality that publishers, agents, and readers so desperately try to quantify yet that remains elusive in terms of our ability to define it. As a fellow writer, when you come across that kind of skill, it’s also incredibly humbling. Sirius . has it, whatever it is. If The Devil Owns Primetime is any indication, the rest of his work is going to be full of voiceyness, a unique authorial perspective, and some deep dives into horrors both real and supernatural. It may be a somewhat ubiquitous recommendation when it comes to horror, but I do authentically recommend Devil to fans of Stephen King.
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