“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
To call Karen Lucia’s A Second Life Worth Living timely would be an understatement. With its subject matter focused on activism, protest, and revolution within the context of a dystopian near-future (or, alternative present), many of the mundane elements of the novella could’ve been ripped straight from current events unfolding in Minnesota. Second Life is far from your usual revolutionary-styled fantasy, happily free of the bombastic naivety I tend to associate with mainstream engagement with the subject. Full of down-to-earth realism despite its fantastical trappings, Second Life is most likely to appeal to readers who enjoy a subtle application of the speculative, and who prefer character-focused 
works that remain tense without relying on action set pieces.
Ben, Second Life‘s protagonist, is an ordinary guy. At least, he would be if he hadn’t died and then spontaneously resurrected. After being abducted, tortured, and executed by the totalitarian regime that his sister has been working to tear down, Ben finds himself embroiled in a conflict he’d rather have let pass him by. Resurrections like Ben’s are uncommon but not unknown, with those who returns known as “second lifes.” A minority population whose exact nature and provenance are mysteries, second lifes like Ben are viewed with suspicion, including sometimes by those closest to them. Not one eager to stand out, Ben does everything he can to remain unremarkable, something that’s much harder given that his execution provided the catalyst for a popular uprising against the powerful elite. As Ben navigates his new day-to-day (drinks with friends, first and second dates, worrying about his spitfire sister), he’s once again thrust into a dangerous situation when he rescues a newly-reborn second life from the site of an explosion.
One of the aspects of Second Life that I appreciated most was Ben’s ordinary relatability, and it’s this ordinariness that truly makes the work as a whole stand out. Lucia chooses to follow a protagonist who feels as though he could be any of us, rather than the typical dystopian hero full of spunk and opportunities for product placement. This allows Lucia to create a sense of more genuine stakes when it comes to Ben’s life and the lives of those around him. It’s not a work that feels interested in deus ex machina, last-minute rescues or cheaply-timed tragic deaths. Rather, Second Life is about the impact of totalitarianism on those of us simply trying to live our lives (so, most of us), as well as both the impact of trauma on the individual and the ways in which ongoing and escalating brutality can be fought through both traditional and unconventional means.
Much of Second Life is focused on the ways in which Ben meets the moment in which he finds himself, as well as his development of an unlikely strength when faced with the possibility that others will suffer a similar fate to his own. It would have been easy to write Ben as an irritating, whiny, or otherwise unsympathetic character (whether intentionally or accidentally), but instead Lucia paints a detailed portrait of someone worthy of a great deal of pathos. We become frustrated alongside Ben as others demand things of him based on his unasked-for identity, worried for the ways in which his status puts him at risk, and hopeful that he’ll pull himself out of the mental mire of his experiences to find a sense of purpose. Ben’s expressions of pain (mental, emotional, and physical) are handled with careful attention to the ways in which PTSD impacts both the individual and their social circle, and it remained an element of the story that I was especially moved and impressed by. Secondary characters are less detailed than Ben, yet in a short work like this that’s mostly interested in its protagonist, this feels like a wise choice, and in no way hurts the novella. Lucia paints enough of a picture of the supporting cast that we come to care for them, yet never spreads the story too thin over too many character arcs. The character work is very strong, something Second Life needs in order to make an impact.
“I’m exactly the same as I was before. Maybe shittier. Turns out dying doesn’t make a person bouncy and fun.”
While there is some occasional awkwardness here and there, Second Life is extremely readable. It’s a novella that, despite the deceptively ordinary conflicts Ben is often dealing with, is a bit of a page-turner in its own right, and the largely smooth prose does a good job buoying the reader along. The directness of the text feels true, also, to Ben’s voice, his weariness (and occasional sarcasm and gloom) adding further layers to the work. Overall, it’s well-paced and written, laser-focused on its subject.
The speculative elements of Second Life are likely to be divisive for some readers, and although I adore fantasies that keep their magic subtle and mysterious, part of me did long for just a tad more information about the role of magic in Ben’s world. Aspects of the landscape, such as the existence of purportedly dangerous areas of wild magic outside the city, remain vague concepts throughout the story, and the origin and meaning of the opportunities for second lifes felt slightly under-explored given their centrality to the story. It felt as though the concept of the second life itself was playing more of a metaphorical role–standing in for real-world experiences of returning to “normal life” after experiencing brutality–and if this was the intention it could have used just slightly more precision. With the novella’s emphasis on realism, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted the work to explain every speculative detail, but just slightly more sense of the framework of Ben’s life would have clarified certain themes within the story.
A unique approach to themes related to activism and marginalization, A Second Life Worth Living is a novella worth reading and revisiting. I’d recommend it to fans of Sim Kern’s impactful cli-fi novella, Depart! Depart!, as well as the rather brilliant zombie TV series, In the Flesh. As in both these works, the emphasis is on personal experiences of trauma and their impact on activist efforts and community building. Combining the social commentary of some of the best dystopian fiction (I was reminded particularly of Zamyatin’s We), with the deep character work and social concerns of Cadwell Turnbull’s No Gods, No Monsters, I recommend Karen Lucia’s A Second Life Worth Living to anyone looking for a fictional expression of so many of the anxieties of our times.
Buy A Second Life Worth Living from Amazon.
Add A Second Life Worth Living on Goodreads.
