“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
The Dregs by Thomas J. Devens is a multi-POV Grimdark novella with a thematic interest in the futility and brutality of war, as well as the dangers of corruption and sadism in higher levels of government. In that way, it feels sadly relevant to present circumstances in the United States and elsewhere, featuring the kind of villains who in the past may have been critiqued for being too over-the-top, but who now (unfortunately) feel all too realistic. Devens’s marketing of the book–its cover and blurb–gives an excellent sense of its genre and target audience. Fans of Grimdark that’s focused on warfare and its aftermath are most likely to enjoy this one, and I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Ed McDonald’s Blackwing. There’s also a little of the texture and colour palette of The Witcher 3 to the novella’s atmosphere and focus (it’s possible this comparison might extend to the Witcher books as well, but as I haven’t read them, I don’t want to mischaracterize either work). That said, I did find that the areas in which The Dregs had the potential to truly excel and stand out from the pack were occasionally underserved, and that there were some tonal inconsistencies in the prose later in the book that undermined somewhat the seriousness of what Devens otherwise seemed to be working toward.
In the aftermath of a particularly brutal battle, a ragtag group of survivors (the titular dregs) struggles homeward while attempting to find a healer who can tend to their mortally wounded. The magically inclined, including those with the ability to heal, are largely controlled by the aristocracy, however, and so finding someone capable of offering the necessary level of help proves challenging. Elsewhere, a group of sorcerers is escorted to see the king and in order to be trained in their respective arts. Although The Dregs features a number of point of view characters, two in particular stand out as central players. Willuck, one of fleeing soldiers, has just witnessed the death of his rebel commander, whose demise in the novella’s prologue manages to tug on the heartstrings despite the audience’s short time with her. Willuck is, however, also severely wounded himself, and it is his injury, as well as the group’s general need to flee the site of battle that largely propels the first half or so of the narrative. Meanwhile, a young sorcerer named Raspart (Rasp) has been recruited to serve the aristocracy. Unbeknownst to Rasp’s recruiters (who in many ways are more like jailers), Rasp’s Power lies not with pyromancy or the more salubrious forms of magic, but necromancy. Over the course of the novella, Rasp, Willuck, and several more characters, come into conflict with the evil Lord Vlayan, and it is ultimately the need to remove Vlayan from power that becomes the focus of the story.
Devens’s prose is, by and large, very smooth. It’s clear he’s skilled at a technical level, and this helps buoy the reader along easily, despite what might otherwise be a very dense fantasy full of unfamiliar names. Very occasionally, there are some tense issues, but for me The Dregs feels exceptionally polished. There were also, sprinkled throughout, some quite lovely and/or brutal and affecting images and lines. Because the prose is very technically strong, it seems to me that Devens has the skills to be able to intentionally break with grammatical necessity and lean into voice. On the occasions when Devens does so, the writing really shines and Devens’s potential is at its peak. These instances (the highlighted quotation in this review is one example, as is the opening to the novella’s accompanying short story) reveal Devens’s ability to construct setting and atmosphere through character and authorial voice–no small skill. Where Devens occasionally stumbles is in consistency of tone, particularly toward the end of the novella (and this, I feel, is interrelated with some of the issues I have with character and focus). For the most part, the world of The Dregs is one that presents fantasy through the lens of realism. This appears in service to Devens’s interest in the day-to-day struggles of his characters, and allows him to critique war through a presentation of its impact on those who lack social capital in the novella’s monarchist and imperial context. In contrast, however, the text is peppered with phrases that feel plucked from an almost cartoonish commercial context. Dialogue like, “Let’s finish this!,” “This ends here,” and “Your taint upon the world ends here!” feels out of place against the surrounding prose. It’s not that there’s necessarily a problem with dialogue like this in and of itself, but it does undermine some of what Devens has otherwise built up, as well as the work’s darker tone.
“Cracked soil shifting and bulging. Erupting. Twisted hands, gnarled and decayed, forced their way through, tearing free their unmarked graves.”
The worldbuilding in The Dregs feels elaborate in the sense that it’s clear Devens has put a lot of work and thought into its details. The somewhat fractured world of the characters–war-torn and embittered–feels believable and as though there is a larger iceberg submerged beneath the surface of the novella. That said, there’s nothing that particularly makes the world stand out to me against any number of other epic fantasy worlds, and particularly ones in this subgenre. In some ways, this works to the novella’s benefit. Epic and secondary fantasy universes are often a weakness in short form fiction, simply for the reason that the author has very little page time in which to provide necessary context for the reader. This can lead to awkward infodumps that slow down current action, or confusion when context is missing. Devens avoids any clunky infodumping, and I was never confused. While both of these are to Devens’s credit, however, I felt a lack of investment in the politics or details of the world precisely because it feels as though these details could be substituted for those from any number of similar worlds or series. There are specifics, but it doesn’t feel as though they matter. A generous sprinkling of poetry throughout The Dregs adds additional glimpses at the world’s lore and at national or ethnic perspectives on historical and present conflict, but for the most part these were disruptive rather than enlightening, feeling clunkier at the line level than Devens’s more accomplished prosecraft.
A lack of a particularly original world isn’t, I would argue, necessarily a drawback depending on a work’s focus. If the intent is to emphasize character work or an unusual prose style, etc, it may be an asset if the reader can largely fill in the worldbuilding blanks based on past reading experience. I think this is true of The Dregs, which in many ways works best as a character piece. It doesn’t matter what world the characters occupy, because their struggles are both universal and deeply personal. Willuck and Rasp in particular are compelling and likeable. Although this is a grim and gritty universe, they demonstrate an empathy, loyalty, and selflessness that makes them both easy to root for. There are additional POVs–mostly notably a palace guard and fantasy-cocaine addict named Ilanya, who spends The Dregs questioning her loyalty to Lord Vlayan–but by and large it’s Willuck and Rasp who demonstrate the most depth and who move the plot forward. While there’s action aplenty in the novella, it was during Willuck and Rasp’s private, personal reflections that Devens’s skills made themselves most apparent. Specifically, there’s a beautiful and heartbreaking scene toward the end of the novella that featured Willuck’s reminiscences on a more peaceful time and the home he’d been forced to leave. I was impressed by Devens in the passage, and I would have liked to have seen him lean into these moments slightly more through the novella. While I hoped that things would turn out well for Willuck and Rasp, for example, I didn’t feel the emotional ache I longed for and that I feel like Devens is more than capable of eliciting from the reader, with just a bit more awareness of where his (and the novella’s) storytelling strengths actually lie. The world and its themes are things we’ve seen before; this liberates the text and allows for the potential to emphasize deep character work, emotionally rich prose, and the specifics that make a common set of thematics worthwhile engaging with in this particular story. While we do see a glimmer of this, I wanted Devens to commit wholeheartedly. For The Dregs to be able to do such character work and focus on plot and world, I feel it would need to be longer so that the details of that world start to matter more to the reader. A clearer focus on character in The Dregs would have helped me as a reader know where to focus my own attention. As is, the pacing is hurt slightly by a certain listlessness in the plot, which comes off as though it ought to be character-focused, but perhaps is trying to be more world and plot-based.
Aside from some of the more emotional, quieter character moments, one of the novella’s strengths lies in key, brutal moments that showcase Rasp’s abilities. Necromancy is often fascinating in fantasy, since its positioning in a secondary world can enrich the reader’s sense of the moral and ethical positions of both specific characters, and that world’s prevailing powers. As a horror fan and author, I’m also just a sucker for some cool and unique grotesquerie, and Devens provides. That Rasp plays into the heroic farmboy archetype, further emphasizes the the potency of the horror during moments when he’s forced to use his powers, since his own reactions to what he’s capable of lend an emotional weight to the scenes. One of the very successful layers of characterization in The Dregs lies in how Devens parallels Rasp’s growing confidence in himself with a more mature understanding of the ways in which his raw ability’s potential to harm and cause violence is neither marker of his inherent taintedness, nor something that he ought to regard as uncritically good or helpful.
While my critiques may seem harsh, I do want to emphasize that Devens is clearly exceptionally talented and skilled, and that it’s likely that die-hard fans of this type of story may not care about the originality of the world vs. its focus. For some readers, the comfort of familiarity is an important (even essential) part of the reading experience. In some ways, it’s precisely because Devens so clearly teases a ability to hook the reader with strong character work that I’m hungry for him to showcase more–to lean into the ways prose and style can communicate character voice, and to really push the depth and vulnerability of the emotions we see on page. Overall, The Dregs is a competent work in the genre, and I have a feeling Devens is one to watch, though I feel this particular novella suffers from a little unevenness and forgettability. It’s nonetheless a novella I can see myself recommending to the right reader, given the quality of the prose and presentation.
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