A book about cannibal priestesses and body horror? Say no more. From the marketing, this book should have been a perfect match for me. Unfortunately, I came out more than let down.

Frankly, I think the majority of my complaints stem from what felt like very weak worldbuilding. Star Eater takes place on a floating island in the sky, in a society governed by bureaucratic cannibal priestesses who worship ‘the Eater’. The priestesses are all women due to how their power, called Lace, is passed down matriarchally and also turns men into zombies post-coitus. Which sounds interesting, right? But beyond that one paragraph, we really don’t get much more. Hell, for the most part, these women may as well be running your standard republic , not a theocracy. For a group of characters centered around worshipping a cannibal, the religious aspect is basically nonexistant.

Through the religious bureaucracy and a vaguely explained food shortage, Hall makes an attempt to tackle systemic power. This society, living on the island in the sky, is held purely through these priestesses’ Lace, and thus, the priestesses maintain de facto power of government. Obviously, certain groups of people are unhappy. Perhaps it’s that I read CL Clark’s The Unbroken too recently, which beautifully tackles colonialism and the different mindset towards that system, but this attempt felt so extremely halfhearted to me. Our main character, Elfreda, occasionally makes reference to the fact that yeah, maybe she and her Sisters shouldn’t have all this power given the rampant corruption within their religion, but then almost immediately passes it off that the people need their power and thus the Sisters must stay in power.

And then we get to Elfreda herself. There’s a lot of reviews on Goodreads that compare this book to a YA novel in terms of shallow worldbuilding and character depth and frankly, they’re not wrong. Elfreda is your typical naïve YA protagonist with the personality of a wet rag, suddenly thrust into a world she’s unprepared for, with an added layer of Chosen One nonsense stacked on top. Really, the only difference is that she’s in her early 20s instead of her late teens. I can’t say I hated her character, but there was just so little to draw in the first place.

With all that being said, I can’t say this book was bad. The story is well-paced and the cannibalism aspect, which only gets fully explore in the latter half, was well done. Hall does an excellent job with the body horror, both in the gruesome depictions of the zombies and the feelings of certain disgust as the characters we follow are forced to consume raw human flesh.

Overall, I rate this book a 3/5. While the story itself wasn’t bad, I found the worldbuilding aspect extremely lacking, both in the religious aspect and the over societal structure. Our MC is fairly on par with the typical bland female YA protagonist, and I really wish the book had learned further into the horror aspect of the cannibalism.

I never thought I would say this but I wanted more cannibalism and religion from this cannibal nun zombie story. Yup, that’s a sentence I just typed.

This is a story about a world that follows a matriarchal society with a sisterhood that has a bizarre magic system with bizarre repercussions. In order to maintain their power, known as lace, they need to consume the flesh of other sisters (ie their moms, etc.) There’s also this whole thing where they have to continue the bloodline but infect any men they have sex with with a zombie creating STI. So there’s that. And then some political upheaval and revolution from the ranks, ya know, the works. Yeah, I have no clue how to describe this book.

So all that being said, most of the things that were intriguing to me as a reader (the horrific stuff) wasn’t on page very much and most of the story is just political drama amongst the sisters and from the rest of society. I had a hard time keeping track of who was who a majority of the time and I realized partway through the book that this was largely because there are almost zero physical descriptions of anyone. I believe this was done on purpose to dehumanize a lot of the characters but it made me hard to picture everyone and keep all the characters straight.

I like the concept of this world and how it plays on heredity power in all ways symbolically and literally; physical, magical, emotional, societal. The act of having to eat your mother to continue your line of power has a lot of impact and I would have liked to explore that whole system a bit more. I didn’t care much for the main character though, she felt very naive in a spoiled way. Which is true and accurate but it didn’t seem like she learned or grew much without things directly affecting her. As in, if something wouldn’t impact her personally, I don’t think she would have come to the realizations she did. And that feels very YA to me. In fact most of the characters felt very YA to me just set in an adult fantasy/dystopian/sci-fi world. I would be interested to see what I think about this retreading it in the future to see if I take more away now that I understand it. 3/5 stars.

2.5 stars, rounded up.

Star Eater is listed as an adult book, however, aside from sex being a part of the more horror aspects, this reads like a young adult fantasy. I enjoy young adult, so I didn’t dislike this, but I imagine other readers will.

My primary issue with the book was that it’s a solid 400 pages, and a 15-hour audiobook- but I had no idea what was going on until 50% in. Because of the way things made no sense to me, the vital twist fell flat. How can I appreciate a magical twist, if I don’t really understand the influence of the magical system, to begin with?

As I received an audiobook ARC- I want to say that the narrator did not do a fantastic job of differentiating between who was talking. With a plot that no one explains the pieces of and characters you can’t tell the difference between, this was a headache to follow.

This was a book I so desperately wanted to like, but it fell through for me. Maybe it’s better on paper, but based on other reviews- it looks like that’s wishful thinking. Everything felt shallow and not fully developed, as if we didn’t quite understand the world even as it was being written.

This was a weird book. It started really slowly and didn’t pick up until at least half way through. Honestly, I don’t know that I could even tell you what happened in the first half of the book other than that the MC rode a cat. It was an interesting premise (cannibal nuns!), but it definitely could have gotten to the main story sooner.

4.5/5 Stars

I really enjoyed Star Eater! It was dark and creepy and so good!

It’s set in a floating city ruled by a priestesses that perform magic based in cannibalism.

The book was really engaging! I loved the writing style. I thought that the world was really interesting and I loved the characters.

For me, the only drawback was that, while the book was marketed as being queer-normative and featured characters of many different sexuality, it didn’t feature any trans or non-binary characters. I would have liked to have seen that representation, especially considering how gendered the world in this book is.

Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for providing me with an ALC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was very enjoyable! However there were several times throughout the book that I was confused about what was going on and I had several questions. Most eventually got answered but a few did not and I’m still wondering. My confusion and questions did not take away from the book and I still liked listening to this audiobook.
The world we are introduced to in this books is very different from any I have ever encountered in any other books I’ve read. I seriously enjoyed learning about this new world! However I was not a fan of the Sisterhood of Aytrium and how they keep their magical bloodline going.

Thank you Recorded Books and NetGalley for an advance copy of this audiobook!

Based on the initial description this sounded right up my alley. This had potential to be really amazing. And sadly I DNF at 70%. I had to constantly force myself to continue on with this. There were so many inconsistencies, from characters to storyline. Things that should have been explained better were mentioned, briefly, explained and almost glossed over. While other parts that were insignificant were drawn out to confusion. I did not like how the MC was confused on if she liked/loved the love interest or his sister. It was odd and not needed for the story and plot. Early on it’s explained that the sisters/nuns were pretty much forced to be raped by convicts and murders/rapists to continue their line, and that those men would eventually become zombies due to the magic the women wield? It was not explained or implied that if they were in close none sexual contact, any man would become this way as well. And that’s exactly what happened down the storyline. I had a problem with her friend or near best friend was her counselor and didn’t ever address the fact that the MC was not ok with the “renewal” (or blatant rape) process, just have her day off pass to let her deal on her own. Or when she decided to have an abortion no one really talked to her about it not even her best friend counselor who helped in the process of that? This writer either has never been put in either of those situations and didn’t know how to write it, or didn’t do enough research on the subject and the aftermath of trauma behind it. It just felt like not enough of the information was given for the important bits. And when information was given it seemed like after thought.

The nicest thing I can say about Star Eater is that the narrator was fantastic.

The world building was absolutely a mess. I had no idea the city was floating in the sky until towards the end of the book. I never understood the magic system.

And the without spoiling anything I will just say there was absolutely the built up drama had absolutely no pay off.

Narrator 3 stars. Voice was ok

Story 2
This book wasn't for me. I just could not get into it. It was a bit all over the place and the ending was a disappointment

I didn't hate it, but I was rather disappointed. Where this story shines: horror elements (gory scenes, confronting the unknown, moving through the dank and dark, etc), physical movement (primarily in the second half), and the history/bureaucracy of the Order.

CW: cannibalism, dubious consent sex, death of a parent, mutilation/gore

I went on a bit of a rant about this on Instagram, but I'm growing really frustrated with fantasy worlds upholding the gender binary - particularly when this is a queer / queernormative story (at least in that almost all on-page relationships are sapphic). It means trans people are just totally not taken into account - especially when the genders are enforced by zombification or death (men) or becoming cannibal nuns (women).

And then there were so many weird conveniences. When someone says the zombie disease isn't airborne but then later in the book the only possible way someone catches it is... Airborne. Also how one zombie keeps his personality, thoughts, memories, emotions, sensibilities, etc considerably longer than anyone else for the sake of plot convenience.

The ending was also... Convenient. The last act seemingly has no consequence - especially when the lead-up to that moment is super dramatic and causes a lot of tension. It felt anticlimactic to read the "After" (aka the epilogue) and find out that nobody knows how it happened but everything is essentially fine.

And the transition from the first half to the second half was pretty abrupt. The goals, the style, everything changed seemingly with a turning page. Suddenly we were being given a whole bunch of information that pushed the plot forward. It felt like a whole new (and frankly better) book.

This sounds so negative... As mentioned above, the horror elements - particularly when there were certain confrontation scenes - were very intense and propulsive. Plus the insidious nature of our MC's hallucinations and how they weave through conversation or circumstances.

A flat earth universe run by the society of cannibal nuns who eat their mothers to get their magic powers and use sex to turn men into zombie-werewolf creatures.

Okay, this might have sound interesting, but it wasn't. It is your regular YA fantasy novel with "there's a conspiracy in the upper circles of the society and I, the chosen one, need to stop it.".
The main idea of the world might be good, but the execution was just "meh".

I felt like reading a sequel all along. There were a LOT of names, and for the same person, sometimes the first name will be used, and sometimes the last name, never together, so you are on your own with figuring out who is who.

The world building was also horrendous. We were discovering things as we go and only in the main character's dealing with the surrounding. For a book in which everything is run by religious fanatic nuns, we know very little of the said religion. And the little we know, we find out in a conversation similar to this "You know how we all believe in <i>this</i>?Well, that is all wrong and the truth is <i>that</i>!". But we never knew what <i>this</i> was in the first place, so...

The same goes for the rest of the world. You will find out some things only after 400+ pages and you'll be like "okay, I had a totally different picture of the world".

Also, the "mandatory" LGBTQ moment - everyone is bisexual (and polygamous).

Lousy love interests are the whole deal - I love him, he doesn't love me, he loves me, we can't be together, blablabla.

Finally, the ending was really boring. When will we have a book that doesn't magically work in the favor of our beloved main character? I had some serious Harry Potter vibes, people, with the chosen one and the sacrifice oneself to save the world thing!

Still, I am sure that a lot of people will really like the book. It wasn't bad, but it was nothing new, really.

This dystopian-esque fantasy novel has an MC fit for a YA novel, hereditary magic based on cannibalism, a Sisterhood of nuns running the government, a resistance movement, zombies, food shortage, and big cats.

This review is based on an ARC of the Recorded Books audiobook.

Frankly, I didn’t very much like this book. It is a non-YA YA novel which left me with a lot of questions about heredity, about the magic system, about the Haunts, about the original Star Eater and how and why Aytrium became a floating land, about what the rest of the world looked like, about why there is a resistance to the Sisterhood when we never get to see what’s so bad about it and know nothing about whether the general public is actually observing the Sisters’ religion, the (forced) bi-sexualism, and so much more.

1/5 stars - lots of unused potential, lots of predictable twists, reads YA although it is not supposed to be.

I received this book from the publishers via Netgalley for a review. An exceptional debut novel. Cannibalistic sisterhood, zombie like creatures called haunts and magic this book has it all and more. The narrator draws you into this world and does a very descent job.

I enjoyed it, some parts, but I didn't like it much. I wasn't very invested in the story even with the very interesting points it had. I found the ending a bit too rushed, and some many things happened that it was hard to keep up.
Well written, even with the too much info, and the pace kept you intrigued enough to keep going. I think this works better as a physical/digital book, more than in audiobook. Maybe that's why I didn't like it as much as I thought I would.

Star Eater by Kerstin Hall and read by Samara Naeymi was not what I was expecting but was still an interesting read (or listen, I suppose). It is definitely one of the more unique plots I have read in quite some time and between Hall's prose and Naeymi's easy to listen to voice, I devoured this in huge chunks.

I highly recommend "reading" this as an audio book if you like those. While I would only give the story three stars since it did have some confusing world building that I thought needed more detail, the narration is fabulous and is an easy five stars. I just want to list to Naeymi read me all my favorite books now.

I thought it was well-written written and I liked the plot, but it was sometimes hard to follow and I didn't care about the characters. Maybe I would have liked it more if I wasn't listening to the audiobook.

This book is SO GAY, and it Slaps!!!!

I was completely engrossed in this story from beginning to end! It's the first time in a long time that I have felt fully immersed in the story's world. It quenched my need for great worldbuilding. In more than one scene, I could picture it so clearly.

I feel like the back cover description of this book does a disservice. There is so much more going on in this book because it leaves out giant portions of this plot that also make it interesting *cough* Found Family *Cough* I found myself loving El and her friends so much throughout this. They work so hard to support each other even when the world is against them.

So in considering this book, please use the lower two paragraphs of the description to determine best if you will enjoy this book.

Before you go forward with this book, you should know the content is dark and contains content that could (will) be disturbing.

Content Warning for Blood, Canabilism, Rape, Abortion, Torture, Famine, Violence, Self Harm, Vomit,

5/5 I loved this!

Definitely not for people sensitive to gore and violence of all kinds. This reminds me of a very dark shadow and bones. This was a little hard to listen too at times but it was so good and I'll miss it.

"Star eater" presents a unique premise, which is what intrigued me in the first place. And the book definitely delivered.

Probably what surprised me the most, in a good way, was how the author managed to fit everything she wanted to tell in less than 500 hundred pages without a lot of info-dumping. I would love to read more stories based on this world, but this book clearly stands on its own. It's always nice to find a good fantasy standalone with decent worldbuilding. That's why it was very easy to get into the story. Overall this is a fast read, even if some parts are a little slower.

The characters were interesting, both the protagonists and the secondary ones. And I love the friendship between some of them. The romance, however, didn't impress me that much. It was written well enough but that was it.
The magic was really interesting, hence why it would be nice to get more stories set in this same world. I feel like there is a lot of potential in this magic system.

When it comes to structuring, I personally enjoyed the first two acts more than the third. Some things felt a bit rushed, even though the ending was quite satisfying.

This book contains LGBT characters and I found the representation good because of how natural it was. This didn't feel like one of those books that add certain characters just to seem inclusive. It just had those characters. Everyone in the story saw it as normal and that was great. More of that, please.

The audiobook was brilliant. The narrator gave a great performance that kept the story alive and she also created very different voices for each character, which made the listening a lot easier.

Overall, this is a great fantasy standalone that I do recommend.

Young Acolyte Alfreda Raughn finds herself at the center of a subversive plot against the ruling powers of The Sisterhood of Aytrium. As a member of the Sisterhood, Alfreda is part of the ruling class but as a young initiate and still working her way through the ranks she finds herself in personal conflict with all sides wielding and wanting power. With the most ominous ways of maintaining their magic, her future is already scripted to fulfill the duty her mother did before her and continue the bloodline through unimaginable personal sacrifice. Caught between the Sisterhood and the Insurrectionists, Alfreda’s journey to understanding her power and position in this intriguing game of apposing factions is filled with magic, deceit and the most unexpected collaborators.

I can certainly recommend the audio version, which was entertainingly narrated by Samara Naeymi. Her narration skills uniquely breathed life into several of the characters. Star Eater has many plot twists, the world building is slow but progressive throughout the novel and the constructs of magic easily understandable. There were a few gaps for me, lingering questions especially on the sustainability of the magic and Alfreda’s character. Regardless, this will appeal to many fantasy fans and overall is a rather interesting look at the corruption of power in society.