I received a free copy of this book, and I read it as part of the judging effort for the SFINCS3 novella competition. I’m part of Team TBR, but these thoughts are my own and do not reflect the final rating of the team.

Sisters of Mercy

By Yuval Kordov

The Sisters of Mercy is an exploration of what it might be like to be permanently hooked up to a machine, knowing you’ll never again be able to walk on your own legs or see with your own eyes.

It’s also a story about a young woman in a giant mech killing monsters from hell, but that’s secondary. 

Still, let’s start with that. I know young women piloting in mechs is a big thing in anime, and I’ve watched a show or two based on the idea. I also know it’s not a thing for everyone, so before you get the wrong idea, I’d like to point out that Sister of Mercy is not that kind of story. This is not about some hot babe in a skintight suit and purple hair that reaches to her knees. 

Rather, our protagonist (Hannah-9, the ninth of her name) was born crippled and malformed, and after rigorous training, she was transplanted into a mech. There’s no indication in the book that this process can ever be reversed. The mech is Hannah-9’s new body, and she’ll use it to fight off the demons of hell every day for the remainder of her life. Given the power of the demons, and given the mental and physical strain on what remains of her, that life is unlikely to be long. Once Hannah-9 dies, the machine will be repaired, and Hannah-10 will take her place, or Hannah-11, if Hannah-10 doesn’t survive the training.

It’s bleak and grim, and while there’s no body horror or gruesome descriptions of the process by which the young girls are fused with their machines, it’s heavily implied. There are a lot of sensory descriptions of what Hannah-9 feels and experiences, and it conveys the impression of a human mind hooked up to a machine in horrific detail.

Here’s where the strength of the story lies. The horror of what’s been done to Hannah-9, and the finality of it. The mech is her prison in which she will die, and in which she will experience horrors not fit for the human mind every day until the end. 

I will also note that I was reminded early on about Warhammer 40,000, and you can draw parallels to that setting, but Sisters of Mercy still feels like a story and world all its own. Yes, it’s inspired by existing tales, but it doesn’t copy – or if it does, it copies stories I’m not aware of.

What I’ll whine about

Visual descriptions. A lot of the time, I felt like the book did not give enough visual cues to picture how something looked. Both places and monsters came across more like concepts and ideas than something I could picture in my mind. I’m a highly visual reader, and usually my complaint is that there is too much description, but in this case it’s the other way around. The world building itself feels solid, I just don’t get a good sense of place, because I have a hard time nailing down how things look.

What I’ll gush about

The horror. I’ve not encountered a mech story that takes this angle before, and I found it fascinating. The experience and struggle of Hannah-9 as she tries to maintain control over the machine she’s been made a part of is terrifying and heartbreaking. That, combined with the monsters from hell seeping into the world, turns Sisters of Mercy into an almost lovecraftian story.

Final Words

Dystopian horror with mechs and demons.