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Title: The Starving Saints
Author: Caitlin Starling
Published: Harper Voyager, May 20, 2025
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 528,960
Text Number: 1937
Read Because: fan if the author, ebook ARC from NetGalley
Review: A castle under siege is saved from starvation by dangerous figures in the form of the Lady and her Saints. This is one of the weirder books I've read in recent memory, and I love weird, but I'm not sure that this weird works. The world is stylized, and the developing plot and magic system lean in hard: medieval vibes, a knight and bee-keeping nuns and an apostate madwoman; monsters masquerading as divine and fey bargains. The cast is very Starling, prickly women negotiating codependent murder/love desires, featuring sexy choking and revenge-lust, what's not to like.
But, structurally... Weird, I say again, but here that means: a hot mess. The narration rotates between the three characters, and they rarely come together or stay long in one place. It's a lot of traveling from one end of the grounds to the other, passing connections and deferred confrontations, and the result is something more gestural than inhabited. I think I appreciate the attempt; I prefer a strange read to an easy one, and this strange is viscous and hungry. But it's also a borderline slog.
Author: Caitlin Starling
Published: Harper Voyager, May 20, 2025
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 528,960
Text Number: 1937
Read Because: fan if the author, ebook ARC from NetGalley
Review: A castle under siege is saved from starvation by dangerous figures in the form of the Lady and her Saints. This is one of the weirder books I've read in recent memory, and I love weird, but I'm not sure that this weird works. The world is stylized, and the developing plot and magic system lean in hard: medieval vibes, a knight and bee-keeping nuns and an apostate madwoman; monsters masquerading as divine and fey bargains. The cast is very Starling, prickly women negotiating codependent murder/love desires, featuring sexy choking and revenge-lust, what's not to like.
But, structurally... Weird, I say again, but here that means: a hot mess. The narration rotates between the three characters, and they rarely come together or stay long in one place. It's a lot of traveling from one end of the grounds to the other, passing connections and deferred confrontations, and the result is something more gestural than inhabited. I think I appreciate the attempt; I prefer a strange read to an easy one, and this strange is viscous and hungry. But it's also a borderline slog.
