“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
Watcher, by J. P. Relph and Mathew Gostelow is a supernatural thriller full of deep character work, a tense and compelling plot, and prose that effortlessly carries off that perfect balance of restraint and lyricism that allows for the authors’ more poignant, beautiful, and exacting lines to shine. Set in the 1990s, with occasional chapters hopping back to the 70s, Watcher combines the grit and realism of a 90s mystery with angelic mythology and themes of religious trauma and abuse. If you’re looking for accomplished writing that hasn’t yet made it big (but ought to herald a long and rich career for both writers), Watcher is one to . . . watch.
The protagonist of Watcher, Daniel Roth, is a government agent with a seemingly unique ability: by touching someone (including minute traces of their DNA) he can enter their body as a passive observer. Daniel’s struggles to reconcile his abilities and the Otherness they mark him with are informed by his fraught religious upbringing, as well as the bullying he faced as an Irish child growing up in England in the 1970s. In the present day, Daniel has seemingly found a sense of purpose working for a government handler called Burke, who uses Daniel and Daniel’s abilities for covert surveillance. This surveillance has taken both a mental and physical toll on Daniel, however. When we meet our protagonist, 
he’s essentially retired from government work, traumatized by a failed mission from his past and physically weakened by repeated uses of his ability. But Burke has a card up his sleeve that he knows will convince Daniel to return for one last hurrah: Bec, Daniel’s closest friend on the team, is now a field agent herself and has gone dark while investigating a religious cult known as the Children of the Watchers. Fearful for Bec’s safety, and blaming himself for leaving her alone on the team, Daniel agrees to help Burke learn more about the Children of the Watchers. The angel-worshipping Children may be an even greater danger than Burke realizes, however. Not only are they collecting supplies to craft a bomb, but there may be something supernatural–and even more powerful than Daniel–compelling the cult’s mission.
When I picked up J. P. Relph and Mathew Gostelow’s supernatural thriller, Watcher, and realized what it was about, I had a fleeting thought that Relph and Gostelow were either terribly lucky that I’d happened to assign it to myself, or dreadfully unlucky. Watcher is, in many ways, primarily a grounded, realistic work. It’s also a novella deeply embedded in the angelic and apocalyptic mythology of Enochic literature and the Watcher angels–the subject on which I had initially intended to write my PhD dissertation, and a topic on which I occasionally lecture and with which I’m rather obsessed. Inspired by what was once a relatively obscure body of (largely) apocryphal religious texts, contemporary Enochic works have seen a surge in popularity, particularly in queer and romance circles. Watcher is neither queer (at least not that I’m aware of) nor a romance, and out of twentieth and twenty-first-century fiction on the topic, it’s probably most similar to the Denzel Washington thriller, Fallen (about a body-hopping demon named Azazel). The basic story of the Watcher angels is ripe for (re)interpretation, featuring as it does a group of rebel angels who, in Promethean style, defy God by granting human beings a series of divine secrets (metalworking, cosmetics, astrological knowledge, et cetera). Romantic literature that takes up the theme tends to focus on the marriage of the angels with human women and what is perceived as the angels’ unjust punishment for doing so (most often, they are cast into a bottomless pit to be tormented for eternity alongside their offspring, while the earth is cleansed by the Flood–yes, the same one from Genesis). Another reading of the story focuses on the crimes of the Watchers and their children. Giant monsters, the Watchers’ progeny (called the Nephilim) are violent, even cannibalistic, and it is due to their ravaging of the community that the humans eventually petition God for aid via the prophet Enoch.
Watcher is terribly clever in its positioning, refusing for the majority of the novella to reveal whether the cult (and the figures they worship) are a force for good or for evil (or, perhaps, some third, more neutral thing). Via Daniel, we are instead drawn into the mystery of a potential connection between Daniel’s abilities and the magic the group purports to wield. Is Daniel, perhaps, the descendent of the Nephilim, part human, part angel? If he is, will it redeem or damn him in the eyes of his late (and abusive) mother?
“I know what it’s like to fall. I know what it’s like to watch. I see it all now. I never should have feared the Devil. Angels though, I reckon I’m about to find out. According to Eddie Cochran, there are three steps to Heaven. I really hope he’s right. Because there’s only one step to Hell, and I tumbled down that a long time ago.”
The indignities Daniel suffers, and to which he bears painfully silent witness, are presented with a combination of stark, unembellished power, and richly poetic and specific imagery that brings Daniel to life. A sympathetic yet imperfect (and thus more relatable) character, Daniel struggles with past choices that have put him at odds with his family. While both the chapters set in the 90s and those that focus on Daniel’s childhood paint a picture of a man burdened by guilt and inner turmoil, Daniel never comes off as whiny, wallowing, or self-indulgent. His own reflections on his past are received as fleeting but deep cuts, revealing a maturity to Relph and Gostelow’s psychological understanding of the character. In many ways, Daniel is no-nonsense yet also emotionally fragile and with a genuine care for those around him. Relph and Gostelow are able to craft a complex and dynamic character in fewer pages than many writers achieve in books that are three or four times the length.
Although I praise the character work, there’s much to recommend in terms of Watcher‘s pacing and plot as well. The aforementioned mystery (the strength and tension of which is, I’m sure, heightened by a familiarity with Enochic literature and its reception history) is consistently compelling. Never was I bored while reading, and though I put the novella down occasionally to work on other things, I was always happy to pick it back up. The unfolding of Daniel’s character, conveyed in what I’ll clumsily call the “flashback” chapters, is integrated meaningfully with the plot, so that learning about Daniel’s present motivations and sense of purpose becomes a compelling mystery of its own. The brutal acts Watcher engages with, and to which Daniel has historically been an unwilling witness, are presented with a rawness that is pulse-pounding and viscerally impactful, while nonetheless being empathetic. Never are these scenes trite or exploitative, and they linger more in the mind for what isn’t graphically described, all while lending a sense of stakes to the present action.
If Watcher stumbles at all, it’s in some of its climactic scenes. While I loved the ending on the whole, there’s a choice of approach in terms of the dialogue of one of the novella’s more villainous characters that felt a little campy and out-of-place compared with the realism of the rest of the work. Leaning into the potential for weirdness and otherworldliness there would, I think, have been more impactful and frightening.
Overall, Watcher is the kind of novella I’d hoped to find when I returned to SFINCS as a judge–the type that makes me want to yell, “Why does this have so few reviews?” at my computer screen, and that I feel can really benefit from the visibility boost of contests like SFINCS. The skill on display from authors J. P. Relph and Mathew Gostelow demonstrates that coveted balance of genre awareness with originality and strong prose. As a supernatural thriller, it nonetheless feels grounded in realistic and textured characterization, and the pacing is pitch perfect. I recommend Watcher to fans of angel mythology and folk horror (particularly of the cult variety), but also to fans of supernatural and paranormal thrillers in general. Anyone who misses the texture of 90s mystery (whether on screen or page), would do well to give Watcher a try. There’s something about the groundedness of the prose that likewise makes me feel as though readers of Phil Williams might really enjoy this one.
If you’re on the fence, please do give it a try. It’s a book that merits a second look and that, I imagine, will also reward returning readers.
