If you want a fully immersive escape from reality this is your book! The story begins with a castle and its people under siege. Things are becoming extremely desperate and then “help” arrives. Is it really help, however, or will the people find themselves in a different kind of desperation?

The world building of this book was amazing. There are some fantasy books I can flip through because it’s the same story with different names. This book, however, built an entire world where I could see myself in while reading. The best books make you forget you’re reading a book and this is one of them.

The character development was also excellent. There were a wide variety of characters in this book and I appreciated that even the side characters were given page time as the main characters. Speaking of the main characters, they were fully thought out and had real depth.

I highly suggest this book if you’re looking for a fantasy with some meat on its bones (no pun intended).

This was such a fever dream and I loved every single second of it.

I think for me there was a really great development of the three main characters. They were each distinct and uniquely their own in such a fascinatingly built world. With different motivations and past traumas, they each navigated the misfortunes falling upon them all in very different ways. I thought the way they navigated the castle and its inhabitants, and more specifically EACH OTHER was really well done. I rooted for each of them at different points and never knew which the direction the story was going to take place. Kept me captivated the entire time.

I was lucky enough to also get to listen to the audio while simultaneously reading and it made the experience that much more captivating.

I found myself captivated by the antagonists and without giving anything away - I wanted to know more!

Definitely wonderful story - bizarre and odd and such a trip. It's grim and dark and eerie in all the best ways and I would definitely read more from this author!

A wonderfully woven medieval horror! As someone who has not delved into medieval horror very much I was unsure of where my interest would fall, but Caitlin Starling has been on my radar since I read The Death of Jane Lawrence - and it did not disappoint. If you want a dark, ravenous horror that will creep up on you I HIGHLY recommend.

This book was transporting but I didn't understand how the heroines won so I found the ending unsatisfying.

A gothic fantasy horror with body gore and cannibalism sounds like the perfect combo, and it would have been, but unfortunately this story was poorly executed. This fever dream of a book had me losing the plot every other chapter. I do love a book with all vibes and no plot but this one did not work for me.

Thank you for an early copy in exchange for an honest review!

This book was so disappointing. The premise is right up my alley and I thought I was going to devour it but unfortunately I dragged it through 340 pages. Most of the time I had no idea what was happening but I’m used to weird books and I trust the writer but in this case for some reason it didn’t deliver. It is not the writing style, she is good. But something about the pace felt off. The world built by the author is unclear (also, I thought this was historical fiction with a dark gothic twist but it is actually Fantasy) The characters are strong but I felt they were disconnected with the world they lived (again, subpar world-building)
The best thing in this book is the cover design and the choice of font. Great job with that!

Oh this one made my skin crawl. It was a fantastic pride read, and had some of the wonderful claustrophobic horror of the author's previous The Luminous Dead with a cast of compelling, if not particularly likable, characters. The descriptions were excellent.

My Selling Pitch:
Hannibal but it’s medieval lesbians vs demons? faeries? your CCD teacher? A visual banger with a slapshod plot. Still kinda worth the read imo.

Pre-reading:
Publishing said Samantha’s reading nuns this year. Whoever made this cover needs a raise. Sheesh.

(obviously potential spoilers from here on)
Thick of it:
Corkindril

Oh lordy, what kinda monster she feedin’?

The names in this book are crazy.

I’m reading this with the tone of The Favorite’s Elle Fanning.

Oh, I’m into this. I love a Gothic.

Oh bitch, is this sapphic? (Yes. Samantha, read a blurb. I’m begging you.)

Also, if you tell me blond knight, I will only see Jamie Lannister. I’m sorry.

gambeson

I’m already like this is what that Lady Macbeth novel should’ve been.

They told me this was slow. This is all gas no brakes. (I mean it is slow, but it’s consistently slow and doesn’t feel slow because it’s so interesting.)

Title drop

Detritus sin x2

They're eating the dogs

I think it’s in the honey. Like some groupthink possession? Because they’ve made such a point that the two girls who aren’t enthralled don’t eat the honey.

Is this a Planet Midnight situation where they stole Treila‘s face when she looked through the crack to hell? (Not quite, bitch.)

I’m not convinced they’re eating vegetables. I think they’re eating something else that they’ve been fooled into thinking is fresh food because of the hallucinations. (Unclear but heavily implied.)

Some sort of hallucination between the kitchen water and the honey?

Not baby birding it to her!

I feel like she’s not doing anything mystical but instead it’s just science. Like is this some sort of iron sulphur reaction? (I used to be in STEM, can you even believe with commentary like this lol?)

Detritus times 3

There’s so much foreboding-
You are hungry and I respect hunger- to this book and I like it so much.

Haha gayyyyy
Also what the fuck is happening. What a banger of a gothic horror, but three unreliable narrators is wh-ild.

I wonder if they’re the 4 horseman of the apocalypse somehow?

It’s def people.

I feel like the fig is an eyeball.

You didn’t have to spell out the explanation. I got it the first time.

This is such erotic hunger horror. It’s so well done.

Treila is a FORCE.

MY JAW DROPPED. This book fucks.

Propolis

Where does the Leo guy fit into this? He’s been noticeably absent.

I hope we get an explanation and not just teehee, supernatural. (SIGH.)

Detritus x4

It’s very Hannibal the show.

This book is so hard to read. I think it’s because it’s all visuals. I think it would translate well to an a24 film.
Very Midsommar, you know?

Hannibal but it’s medieval lesbians vs demons.

Detritus x5

My sub has a sub hahaha

I’m so mixed on it. It’s such a banger, but also what the fuck even happened?

Post-reading:
I don’t think this works the best as a book. I think it’d make a banger a24 horror film with Florence Pugh and Gwendoline Christie.

If you’re the kind of reader whose imagination generates a feature film when you read and you like a vibey gothic, I think you’ll fuck HEAVY with this. If you can’t produce your own visuals, I think you’ll hate your time with this. It’s all imagery and juicy backstory setup with no, and I do mean no follow through on a plot backbone.

3 unreliable narrators all experiencing a fever dream is a choice. It is not lacking in the psychological horror department. Concrete answers or a cohesive plot structure? No, nada, zip, zilch. And as far as those visuals go, they do feel like a direct rip from Hannibal. Bees, shrikes, cannibalism- it’s all incredibly striking, but if you’ve watched the show…I think Fuller did a lot of this book’s heavy lifting for it. I just don’t find much fault with that because I loved those visuals the first time I encountered them, so glossing them with sapphic horror doesn’t exactly make me cranky.

The seductive, consumptive horror in this is worth reading. If you like messy power dynamics in the bedroom and healthy skepticism of religious idolatry, it’s gonna work for you. It just is.

Where it fell apart for me was the central conflict. I don’t like supernatural as explanation. I think it’s sloppy. I think it’s lazy. I need my monsters to have clearly defined edges, not a rule book that shifts as needed. It makes the villains come off as so overpowered, and then you feel cheated when the everymen triumph over them. The real horror being that the call is coming from inside the house? Stunnin’. We were never actually in any danger of leaving because the enemy packed up and left while we were sleeping and no one thought to check? Beyond idiotic. The general public never factors into this book. It’s really just three lesbians vs the world. And that requires too much suspension of disbelief for me to buy into. Desperate people are cutthroat and sneaky. It’s hard to believe that Treila is the only capable one in the entire castle.

And it gets repetitive. We didn’t need to squirm through that tunnel passage over and over and over again. Your audience has a limited attention span before their eyes start glazing over. Anything offered more than twice is gonna induce some skim reading. And with a book this slow, any lull is gonna make it hard for the audience to want to pick it up again. Similarly, I hate when a book drops a scene that’s all subtext, and then has a character’s inner monologue summarize and explain why that “nothing” dialogue was so significant only a few paragraphs later. Just trust your reader to pick up what you’re putting down. If they can’t grasp the subtleties, they’re not your intended audience. I just don’t think it’s worth dumbing down a text for better mass market appeal because if they can’t grasp it the first time around, they’re write offs. They’re not gonna like the book because you’ve already frustrated them by making it too confusing, and they’re not gonna change that opinion even if you start spoon feeding it to them. And the people who like to work when they read are gonna sit there eye rolling like yes, yes, I already got that. Can we move this plot forward already? Authors kneecap themselves whenever they do this. Just pick an audience and move.

And while this book is so very slow, I was invested and interested the whole time. I was dying to find out what was really going on. It took me forever to get through, and it was far too easy to get distracted while reading this book, but I still enjoyed my time with it even if I do think the ending is such a cop out. I think if it’s your genre, it’s worth the read, just go in knowing you’re gonna have to work, bitch to understand the novel, and the ending’s probably going to disappoint you.

Who should read this:
Hannibal fans
The girls and the gays
Religious horror fans
If you’ve got trypophobia or a thing with bees and want to be scared
Bunny fans
A24 horror fans

Ideal reading time:
Summer

Do I want to reread this:
Lowkey kinda. I feel like it would be a trippy book club book.

Would I buy this:
Yes. I like the cover, and I’d loan it out to the right audience

Similar books:
* The Unworthy by Augustina Bazterrica-dystopian horror, religious commentary, queer
* The Lamb by Lucy Rose-horror, queer, cannibalism
* Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin-dystopian horror, queer, cannibalism
* Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica-dystopian horror, cannibalism
* American Rapture by C. J. Leede-dystopian horror, religious commentary, queer
* Private Rites by Julia Armfield-dystopian horror, classic retelling, family drama, queer
* Bunny by Mona Awad-psychological horror, dark academia, queer
* Stag Dance by Torrey Peters-historical, folktale retelling, horror, queer, short story collection
* I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman-dystopian, social commentary
* The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig-fantasy romance, camp, religious commentary
* Lucy Undying by Kiersten White-horror, Dracula retelling, queer
* Grey Dog by Elliot Gish-historical horror, queer
* Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid-historical magical realism, classic retelling

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The whole thing was a disturbing religious fever dream. From the start it was the most uneasy medieval ride. But I enjoyed it. Medieval books always make me uneasy because I know I wouldn’t survive. This felt like I was constricted in this castle and I couldn’t get out. I also listened to the audiobook, and omg it made it even more atmospherically unsettling. I’m also adding this book to my rotation of comfort reads.

This was an absolute astounding fever-dream novel I loved every second of the depravity, yearning, and bloody mess. Add some cult religion and it's pretty much a recipe for all my favorite things wrapped into one book.
It is a little slow on the uptake and had me worried for a moment that it wouldn't live up to the hype it was portraying. But don't worry; once it gets started it literally does not let up until the very last page. The worldbuilding outside the castle is limited but it only makes the setting that much more claustrophobic for readers. I found myself enjoying the limited scope and reading as the 3 women skirted around the danger at every single corner. Everything from the Saints themselves to the horrors of human nature, and the descriptions of religion and power dynamics were crafted in a maximalist way but still kept hold of the plot and the tension.
Speaking of these women..... The YEARNING??????? I cannot even start to describe how obsessed I was with this dynamic of these three. There were some "interesting" arrangements they found themselves in and I was biting at my Kindle the entire time LMAO. Each of the three MC's had incredible depth and emotion, and their lives intertwined in a messy but functional way.

I lost my kindle for two weeks while reading this ARC and the entire time we were apart I could not stop thinking about this book.

This is a gorgeous and horrific piece of fiction- It has some of the most compelling horror I've read in a long time mixed with characters who will stick with me for a long time. Definitely recommended for fans of The Locked Tomb or Plain Bad Heroines. I wish I could recommend it to more people but the beautiful brutality of the book that is a draw for me is probably not for everyone!

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for the arc!

Aymar Castle is under siege and food is about to run out. Hope is all but lost when a miracle occurs: The Constant Lady and her Saints appear, bringing with them abundance and cheer. Only three very different women, an ex-nun-turned-scientist, a knight of the kingsguard and a servant girl on a mission, seem to be able to see the truth of their situation, that they are in far more danger now than ever before.

When I first read the summary for The Starving Saints I thought it must have been written for me. Medieval castle under siege, fever dream horror, sapphic and full of bees? Sign me the hell up!

And, to start with the positives, a lot of that was present. There’s a lot of interesting yet subtle world building on display here. The religion was interesting and interestingly handled. The looming starvation and dread was captured very well, the tension in the first chapters is palpable. At its best the imagery was sublime, both the gore and cannibalism (another favourite horror staple) as well as the more existential dread. The sapphic energy was off the charts.

But, sadly, for me it didn’t really end up working.

My biggest issue, I think, is that I just wish it had gone further. Further in the horror, for one thing, which considering the amount of gore feels a bit weird to say, but, apart from a few times, it all felt rather distant and sanitized. There were definitely moments that worked but a lot of it felt like just doing the motions.
I also don’t feel the fever dream quality went far enough, either. Here again there was certainly enough imagery that should have made it work, and parts did, but in a lot of ways it just felt too conventional. For fever-dream-horror, the antagonists felt far too comprehensible, even human. The plot, stripped of the imagery, also felt predictable. Frustratingly, parts that were less logical, or at least less explained, seemed mostly just to exist to serve as dei ex machina. I never felt like our main characters themselves were in any real danger. Meanwhile, aside from one or two characters, the rest of the castle was so unimportant that it didn’t really matter what happened to them. So a lot of things just left me cold.
Even the main characters didn’t feel, pardon the pun, entirely fleshed out. The book has three POV characters and, while theoretically they were all completely different from each other, too often their voices ended up the same. Certain actions from certain characters didn’t make sense. I guess that could be chalked up to fever dream logic but, again, it’s a little frustrating. It also made the romance feel a bit underwhelming. There were moments that worked, good concepts under there, but again I was never really invested.

All in all The Starving Saints had its moments and I certainly don’t feel worse off for having read it, but it left me a little cold and my hopes rather dashed.

Caitlin Starling's author bio on Goodreads says "She’s always on the lookout for new ways to inflict insomnia" and boy did I have some crazy insomnia after this book! It took me a bit to get into it, but things started to pick up pace once we're introduced to Treila. Within the oppressive walls of Aymar castle, a populace is under siege, out of rations and starving without hope...until the sudden arrival of strange guests. That's as much as I can share without spoilers, but this book is well worth the ride. I loved the three main protagonists, their messy sapphic entanglements and their character growth in this book. The plot wobbles a bit in the last third of the book, but it's a fun, compelling read nonetheless. Starling does an excellent job of weaving this nightmare together, you'll wince as she pulls on a thread you'd rather she left alone, even as you're mesmerized by the strange visions and bloody, hedonistic tableaus throughout this book. Also 5/5 for making honey absolutely unappetizing. On that note, I recommend reading this book on an empty stomach.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an ARC!

THE STARVING STAINS is beautifully written despite the descriptive text being confusing from time to time. It made some of the major plot points, including the ending, seem unclear. What I did enjoy was the pacing. Starling provides a meticulous outline between the exposition, climaxes, and the in-between horrors once the Saints arrive.

Since this book has cannibalism (due to manipulation and trickery from the saints who make their way into the castle), so keep this in mind if that isn’t a taboo you like to read about.

Thank you Harper Voyager for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

I usually like Caitlin Starling, but honestly, this was just boring. A waste of a pretty cover. The stage setting at the beginning was intriguing but then it quickly lost steam and didn't go anywhere. I wanted more horror and spook.

The premise of this book really intrigued me, but I had some issues with the plot and execution. The horror aspect of this book is very well-done, There's an ever-present sense of dread and unsettledness, Starling does a great job in constructing atmosphere, and I thought the tightly focused setting helped the characters shine at the forefront of the story. However, there is an overall muddiness to the plot itself and in the writing that weakens the overall narrative. I did think the medieval horror setting was really unique; it brings something fresh to the genre. I also thought the recurring themes of hunger and hierarchy were fascinating.

Thank you to Harper Voyager and NetGalley for sending an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really thought I knew what I was getting myself into with this book. I was so wrong, and I’m happy I was. I’ve heard others describe this book as a sticky fever dream, they are a 10000% correct. It felt like a roller coaster that just kept going, with no end in sight. If this was turned into a movie, I could see a Nicholas Cage freak out somewhere mixed in. This book is probably what his dreams are made of. It kept me on my toes & always trying to guess what was next. If you want a fast paced, fever dream with sprinkles of some cosmic-esque horror, get this. I will be adding this to my collection for the cover alone, ugh, it’s everything!
Thank you so much to the Author, Publishers, NetGalley for this ARC.

The Starving Saints is a unique Gothic horror set in a medieval period within a fictional world. It follows three women who live in a castle that has been under siege for the last several months. The inhabitants are starving to death, and one of the main characters is tasked with coming up with a miracle: make food out of nothing before they all die. This impossible task seems no longer necessary when the saints they worship, such as the Constant Lady and the Loving Saint, appear offering them their magic to save them all from starvation. What follows is odd, dream-like, as the main characters try to keep their people alive.

The story alternates between the points of view of the three main characters at the end of each chapter. The madwoman, tasked with making miracles, the knight who serves the king, and a woman who has her own agenda in the castle. Each of the characters was very distinct. However, I felt like there wasn't a lot of world-building outside of what was currently happening inside the castle walls. Only one of the main characters had a substantial backstory, and the lack of world-building made it challenging to care about the characters. The whole world just felt very empty. And once the saints arrive and magic is happening, there is little explanation or exploration of why or how things happen. If you don't mind not understanding the magic going on, this is a pretty interesting story that keeps you engaged. Just don't expect to understand everything in the end.

Trigger Warnings: cannibalism

If you like original, dark, and weird books, definitely give The Starving Saints a try. Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

Who doesn't love medieval fantasy-esque world with a healthy dose of hedonism and horror? I know I do!

⭐️4.5

This is one of the most unique stories I’ve ever read. It really throws you into the story with no background information, which makes everything feel like a fever dream the entire book. This did a great job at blending horror, gothic, and queer in a way that kept me guessing at every corner. I loved the religious honey/bees aspect and the eerie and claustrophobic atmosphere. It’s probably not for everyone, but it was for me