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Little Sister: A Novella about Friendship and Monsters set in Soviet-era Russia
A schoolgirl steps between a soldier and a ravening monster…
1943. Soviet Union is under attack as WW2 is raging. Fighting in the doomed battle of Kursk, Andrei finds himself in a strange city where Svetlana, a girl he has never seen but who looks eerily familiar, saves him from a fist-faced creature. When Svetlana’s family is lost, the two embark on a harrowing odyssey across the snow-covered plain, battling deformed former humans and taken prisoners by the army of black stars. Against impossible odds, they reach their destination where they discover a secret that will change history.
Little Sister is a dystopian historical fantasy set in the Soviet Era. Presenting a richly imagined alternative history world, this is a tale of friendship, survival, and heartbreak. Fans of The Book Thief and The Wolfhound Century will enjoy this striking fantasy rooted in Russian fiction.
1943. Soviet Union is under attack as WW2 is raging. Fighting in the doomed battle of Kursk, Andrei finds himself in a strange city where Svetlana, a girl he has never seen but who looks eerily familiar, saves him from a fist-faced creature. When Svetlana’s family is lost, the two embark on a harrowing odyssey across the snow-covered plain, battling deformed former humans and taken prisoners by the army of black stars. Against impossible odds, they reach their destination where they discover a secret that will change history.
Little Sister is a dystopian historical fantasy set in the Soviet Era. Presenting a richly imagined alternative history world, this is a tale of friendship, survival, and heartbreak. Fans of The Book Thief and The Wolfhound Century will enjoy this striking fantasy rooted in Russian fiction.
- GenresHorror
146 pages, ebook
First published October 15, 2021
5 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Elana Gomel
119 books70 followersBorn in Ukraine and currently residing in California, Elana Gomel is an academic with a long list of books and articles, an award-winning writer, and a professional nomad. She has taught and researched in Israel, Italy, and the US, and is known in the academy for her (purely theoretical) interest in serial killers, alien invasions, and rebellious AIs. She is the author of more than a hundred stories, several novellas, and six novels of dark fantasy and science fiction. Her latest fiction publications are the dark fairy tale Nightwood (Silver Award in the Bookfest 2023 competition) and Girl of Light, a historical fantasy.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 15, 2022
Gomel delivers a fast-paced, phantasmagoric (literally "through the looking glass") journey through 1943 USSR. Gomel's pacing and poetic turn of phrase makes Little Sisters... engaging and horrifying simultaneously. Recommended for fans of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and King's The Dark Tower.
October 13, 2021
LITTLE SISTER by Elana Gomez is a wildly imaginative yet true-to-life historical Alternative History Dystopia. Yes that's a mouthful but understandable. Set in an alternate Soviet Union at the midpoint of World War II, when Russians are warring against the attempted German incursion, those left at home fight their own furious struggles, not only to appease starvation and horrible winters, but against Entities Supernatural and Paranatural. Vampires, shapeshifters, and several species much like human-sized worms, roam the city and frequently disguise themselves as close-to-human. School days involve recounting of the "new definitions" of Enemy species; nights are patrolled by Patrols of Light (I am reminded of Hitler Youth) and ordinary citizens cower indoors to escape the Enemy while the Voice, disembodied, orates incomprehensibly via mirrors, and spews flaming soldiers. Fourteen-year-old Svetlana teams with Andrei, a soldier from the Front, to escape the Enemy and to rescue her mother after her father is arrested.
I am certain you have not read anything like LITTLE SISTER.
I am certain you have not read anything like LITTLE SISTER.
August 7, 2025
Holy crap, what did I just read? A list of thoughts until I can be more articulate:
- The more educated the reader is about the USSR, or Slavic folklore, or WWII, the more impactful this novella will be.
- Gomel trusts her reader; she throws us directly into the thick of it, because she doesn't need to build the world for us. We live in this world. She trusts us to recognize that, and to recognize that if we don't understand something, it is something about our world we don't know (and probably should).
- This novella is the very heart of what I love about horror. No matter how fantastically awful a world can be, we humans are always the worst of the monsters, and horror is just tragedy in disguise.
- I love that even though Andrei is the character from "our" reality, we see everything from Svetlana's point of view. It normalizes everything in a way that forces us to look for the parallels more quickly.
- Andrei and Sveta keep speaking to each other, using a common language, neither realizing for the longest time that while they're saying the same thing, they mean something completely different. Kulak, kosmops, krovososy, mertvetzy, vrediteli; all words that were/are figuratively used to describe people from within the USSR who are or would be considered the "enemy" for Andrei, but are types of oborotni that are the actual Enemy for Sveta. While the people whom Andrei describes as his actual enemies are just that in both their worlds: people invading from an external border.
- This is such a fantastic allegorical take on the dangers of nationalism and the power of words. Except it isn't one story with two meanings, one literal and one symbolic. It's one story with the literal and metaphorical mirroring each other while existing simultaneously . I'm not educated enough to accurately describe what Gomel did here; I just know it took skill, and it's good.
My Google obtained dictionary while reading:
oborotni/oborotnen: Slavic word that generally refers to a shapeshifter or someone who can transform into something else
kulaki: "Kulak" is a term that literally means "fist" in Russian; it is used to describe peasants who gained wealth at the expense of others and became associated with a class of wealthy peasants targeted for political reasons. During the Soviet era, particularly under Stalin, the term "kulak" took on a negative connotation. They were viewed as enemies of the state and were subjected to persecution, including dekulakization, a policy of confiscating their property and deporting them. In the story, they're an oborotni with a face literally like a fist with a belly full of larvae.
kosmops: "Kosmopolity" is a Polish word. It translates to "cosmopolitans" in English. It refers to people who consider themselves citizens of the world, rather than belonging to a specific nation or place. In the story, a form of oborotni, whose complaints grow louder as their stature grows smaller with each generation: from human-like to dog-like to rat-like.
krovososy: translates to “bloodsuckers.” In the story, at first, they're worm-like vampires. Later, there are more evolved ones with a human face, a coiled proboscis in its mouth, and a stinger of a bee.
mertvetzy: the dead, former people.
vrediteli: literally “pests.” In the story, they're damagers, can imitate a person, but damage vulnerable machinery, and make workers sluggish and confused.
- The more educated the reader is about the USSR, or Slavic folklore, or WWII, the more impactful this novella will be.
- Gomel trusts her reader; she throws us directly into the thick of it, because she doesn't need to build the world for us. We live in this world. She trusts us to recognize that, and to recognize that if we don't understand something, it is something about our world we don't know (and probably should).
- This novella is the very heart of what I love about horror. No matter how fantastically awful a world can be, we humans are always the worst of the monsters, and horror is just tragedy in disguise.
- I love that even though Andrei is the character from "our" reality, we see everything from Svetlana's point of view. It normalizes everything in a way that forces us to look for the parallels more quickly.
- Andrei and Sveta keep speaking to each other, using a common language, neither realizing for the longest time that while they're saying the same thing, they mean something completely different. Kulak, kosmops, krovososy, mertvetzy, vrediteli; all words that were/are figuratively used to describe people from within the USSR who are or would be considered the "enemy" for Andrei, but are types of oborotni that are the actual Enemy for Sveta. While the people whom Andrei describes as his actual enemies are just that in both their worlds: people invading from an external border.
- This is such a fantastic allegorical take on the dangers of nationalism and the power of words. Except it isn't one story with two meanings, one literal and one symbolic. It's one story with the literal and metaphorical mirroring each other while existing simultaneously . I'm not educated enough to accurately describe what Gomel did here; I just know it took skill, and it's good.
My Google obtained dictionary while reading:
oborotni/oborotnen: Slavic word that generally refers to a shapeshifter or someone who can transform into something else
kulaki: "Kulak" is a term that literally means "fist" in Russian; it is used to describe peasants who gained wealth at the expense of others and became associated with a class of wealthy peasants targeted for political reasons. During the Soviet era, particularly under Stalin, the term "kulak" took on a negative connotation. They were viewed as enemies of the state and were subjected to persecution, including dekulakization, a policy of confiscating their property and deporting them. In the story, they're an oborotni with a face literally like a fist with a belly full of larvae.
kosmops: "Kosmopolity" is a Polish word. It translates to "cosmopolitans" in English. It refers to people who consider themselves citizens of the world, rather than belonging to a specific nation or place. In the story, a form of oborotni, whose complaints grow louder as their stature grows smaller with each generation: from human-like to dog-like to rat-like.
krovososy: translates to “bloodsuckers.” In the story, at first, they're worm-like vampires. Later, there are more evolved ones with a human face, a coiled proboscis in its mouth, and a stinger of a bee.
mertvetzy: the dead, former people.
vrediteli: literally “pests.” In the story, they're damagers, can imitate a person, but damage vulnerable machinery, and make workers sluggish and confused.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews