Review: The Starving Saints, by Caitlin Starling
by
Stuart Holland
I often think that to truly enjoy something, it has to line up with where you are in your life at that time. Not in a profound way (though that works too), but in a more mundane “this is the kind of thing I want to read/watch/play right now”. Unfortunately I think I picked this book up at the wrong time. Because it does seem that it’s very good, and something I would very much enjoy at the right time, but it didn’t grab me like it should’ve.
The tale of Phosyne, Voyne, and Treila is strange in a good way. It twists and turns outside reality, defying explanation but also not begging for it. The mystical world they live in is one that they don’t understand. And since we see it through their eyes, we don’t get to understand it either.
The blurb about the book talks about the Saints right away, but the book itself lingers in the time before that for longer than I expected. Everyone spends a significant amount of time starving, which does set the scene for the gluttonous outcomes the Saints bring with them. It also sets the downtrodden tone for the reader. Starting at desperate, the book’s characters soon find themselves cast adrift beyond mortal capability. And then non-mortal comes knocking.
This book is labeled as a horror. And I suppose I can see why. There’s a fair amount of cannibalism. There are teeth in the darkness that are more and less than human. But it’s not horror in the way that puts me off things. The dread, the strangeness, the desperate circumstances, all feel like a part of the story and never a threat to the reader. It doesn’t keep me up at night.
Overall I do think this book was very good. But I wasn’t in quite the right frame of mind to appreciate it to its fullest.
