⭐ 4.25/5 stars

So, listen. My room is painted pink. My desk is painted pink. My Spotify is full of cutesy bubblegum kpop girl group music (with a dash of Sabrina Carpenter). I keep my hair down to my waist. I like Ghibli movies and dumb sitcoms. My stationery supplies are fairytale flower pegasus-themed. I like drinks which are more sugar and syrup than coffee, heaps of frosting on my cake, and my high school prom dress was this pale pink tulle confection that I would still wear today if I ever had the opportunity.

All that is to say, i’m a huge girly-girl—but wow I love cannibalism. This book was fucking MADE for me.

Overview: The Starving Saints is a feverish nightmare spun in the shape of a novel. It touches on themes of power, devotion, and desperation through the lens of condemnation and salvation alike. The characters simmer with doubt and conviction in equal measure, the tension is so thick as to be smothering, and each new revelation feels like a step further into a madness one might never be able to crawl out of. Heady and enthralling in the most visceral and macabre of ways, the atmosphere of this book is at once eerie, anguished, vicious, chilling, and electrifying, and I found that I simply could not look away.

What to expect: This is definitely one of those books that feels more vibes than plot. The vibes, however, are impeccable. Provided that you like what it’s trying to do.

And honestly, I think that’s the key thing to this book—it leans hard into the “fever dream” atmosphere advertised in the blurb, and the actual plot seems to fall secondary to that. Some people might care, some people might not. I found myself in the latter category because Starling’s writing was compelling enough to suck me into the madness and grotesquerie of it all.

In terms of the actual gore and body horror, I thought that Starling struck a good balance of indulging in the visceral gross-ness of it while also crafting the writing with artistry and restraint where necessary. It’s vivid without being overdone. The book isn’t just about the fantastical creatures and the cannibalism, and I think this was a good approach in making sure that some of the other themes weren’t overshadowed or drowned out by the gore. I found that aspect of the book to be executed quite well!

Finally, I liked the horror-y elements and feel of the book, but I don’t feel qualified on making any specific determination of what kind of horror this book should be categorized as. I will say that I’m not much of a horror reader myself, but I think this book gave me—a hardcore fantasy fan—enough trappings of a typical fantasy (sieges, magical happenings, mysterious miracles and formulations, strange creatures) to enjoy the fantasy in tandem with the horror atmosphere. I did really enjoy how Starling used the fantasy elements to enhance the horror, and vice versa.

In-depth breakdown: From the very first page, the very first line, the tension in this book is a tangible thing. Hope, desperation, and doom are the intertwined threads of an eerie, oppressive atmosphere that gnaws at the mind, all-consuming in its persistence. The prose is just flowery enough to be descriptive, and just restrained enough to carry a stark sense of simplicity, all of it coming together to form a subtly striking writing style which creeps into the consciousness to completely envelope the reader in the nightmare Starling has crafted.

I really enjoyed how the characters and their circumstances were introduced, all of them trapped by means both physical and figurative; there was a pleasing circularity in how Starling played the three main characters off of each other, using each of their fears and desires and goals to ply into the fears and desires of the others. Each one of them is unraveling in their own way. Each one of them is inextricably tied to the others in their own ways. From Voyne’s staunch sense of duty and anguished devotion, to Phosyne’s hunger for knowledge and spiraling, starving solitude, to Treila’s steel determination and vicious cunning—all three of them were interesting and compelling. I just loved how each of their arcs seemed to compound upon those of the others.

The plot is very much a slow burn, until it’s not. The tension simmers and simmers until it explodes into action, boiling to a fever pitch. The characters are tested, ripped apart, and stitched back together, changed so irrevocably that they are made anew. Each revelation forces them to contend with truths they believed to be infinite. Each slaughtering births something new and blinding out of the gore and brilliance.

My only gripes with this book have to do with pacing and some storytelling decisions which I didn’t understand. Ultimately, I think Starling probably could have shaved off 50-100 pages without losing out on the impact of the story. There were also a few plot developments that weren’t explained all that well, at least to me, but the atmosphere of this book was gripping enough that I honestly didn’t care a lot in the moment. As I mentioned earlier, Starling’s writing sucked me in so thoroughly that I was able to get completely lost in the book. Despite some wonky narrative decisions, the sheer atmosphere of it all carried the book for me.

My thoughts: The thematic depth to this book is not necessarily groundbreaking, but I did find it impressive in how so many tiny little branches and offshoots on certain themes were incorporated into the entire narrative. The meaning of power, control, duty, devotion—the violation of loyalty, personhood, autonomy, belief—the characters, whether they were our main trio, the so-called saints, or the side cast trapped within the castle all seemed to encapsulate multiple facets of each different thematic thread woven into the story.

What is power without loyalty? What is devotion without justice? What is duty without belief? What will you give of yourself? What happens when those who are sworn to defend will not give of themselves at all? I’ve had some great discussions about this stuff on my own forum post and on @bbyoozi’s post-read post as well, so I’ll leave off on this now. I did genuinely appreciate how the book not only swept me away in the fever dream of its narrative, but also gave me so many interesting things to chew on while reflecting upon what exactly Starling was trying to say throughout the story.

Conclusion: This book is advertised as an unhinged medieval horror fever dream, and I would say that it fully hits that mark (barring the fact that I don’t feel like I know enough about horror to really define this as more horror vs more fantasy). There is literal cannibalism, as advertised, but I found the figurative cannibalization of the self in service of something new and other to be intensely compelling as well. The writing had me spellbound in the most twisted of ways, and while the pacing could have been tighter, Starling’s grotesque nightmare of a story was so deliciously horrid that I found myself completely drowned in the crawling, oppressive tension, with not a single care as to where or when I might surface.