Star Eater

by Kerstin Hall

From Nommo Award finalist Kerstin Hall, an epic fantasy that reads like Margaret Atwood by way of Dungeons & Dragons

All martyrdoms are difficult.

Elfreda Raughn will avoid pregnancy if it kills her, and one way or another, it will kill her. Though she's able to stomach her gruesome day-to-day duties, the reality of preserving the Sisterhood of Aytrium's magical bloodline horrifies her. She wants out, whatever the cost.

So when a shadowy faction approaches Elfreda with an offer of escape, she leaps at the opportunity. As their spy, she gains access to the highest reaches of the Sisterhood, and enters a glittering world of opulent parties, subtle deceptions, and unexpected bloodshed.

A phantasmagorical indictment of hereditary power, Star Eater takes readers deep into a perilous and uncanny world where even the most powerful women are forced to choose what sacrifices they will make, so that they might have any choice at all.

• ISBN10: 1250625319
• ISBN13: 9781250625311
• Publish Date: 22 June 2021
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 12 July 2023
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 448
• Language: English

Reviews

[Quirky Cat]

Kerstin Hall is back with a novel like no other. Star Eater promises to find a way to merge science fiction, horror, nuns, and cannibalism. Yes, you read that right.

Elfreda Raughn is an involuntary member of the Sisterhood of Aytrium. She wants out. She wants out so bad; she'll take any opportunity that comes her way – even if the odds of failure (and thus, death) are high.

Offered the promise of escape, Elfreda doesn't think twice about becoming a spy against the Sisterhood. Yet, she'll quickly learn that this world is so much more complex and horrifying than she had ever prepared herself for.

Okay, we all knew that I was going to read Star Eater, right? How could I not, given everything that it promises? I know I'm not the only one that was super curious about what Kerstin Hall had to offer here.

The fact that I've literally never read anything like this is awe-inspiring. Star Eater is in a league of its own. I imagine that this will result in some people either loving or hating it. Before deciding how you feel on the matter, consider some content warnings for this book. One of them should be obvious: cannibalism. There's also implied rape, plus the concern of pregnancy (which is implied to be obligatory).

I'm honestly not sure that many authors could have pulled this story off, truth be told. Yet Kerstin Hall's writing style is perfect for it – even the more graphic and horrifying elements. In a way, this kind of reminded me of some of the darker stories to come out of Warhammer 40K. That is to say; I really dug it.

Thanks to Tor.com and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Read more reviews at Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

[Inkslinger]

'Star Eater' by Kerstin Hall, takes place in Aytrium, a dystopian fantasy land where an order of women called the Sisterhood wield all the power. Males and those from non-magical bloodlines are second class citizens, but being a sister isn't necessarily optimal either.  

 

Elfreda Raughn is just an acolyte. Her best friends are both non-magical, Millie and Finn.. they're also the only family she's got. She wants out of the Sisterhood and all the ritualistic activities they center their lives around.

 

When a shadowy faction offers her an opportunity to avoid some of the most trying day-to-day duties, she agrees to spy for them. Her tasks give her access to a world she's never seen before. The elegant parties, twisted games, and dangerous interactions that only the leaders amongst her order engage in.. but surviving them may be another story.

 

Conceptually it's an intriguing story with incredibly dark elements. Not only do the Sisters engage in blood magic, it's quite frankly a brutal existence. Even those at the top have to sacrifice heavily, having more power only enables them to choose between those sacrifices a bit more aggressively and in Aytrium, none of the choices are good.

 

Hall manages to take some truly horrific acts and make them so palatable that they seem almost acceptable within the structure of the story. Which, isn't to say there isn't an occurrence here and there that's methodically too much even under the expectations she sets.

 

I enjoyed the multi-tiered conflict. The characters have plenty of internal struggles, but there are also waves and waves of conflicts overlapping and crashing into each other amongst the citizens of Aytrium. Though I did feel the ending was a little anti-climactic for me, the path from about the midway point of the book up to that conclusion hits pretty hard and fast. In fact, there's a moment it the city that is really rough emotionally.

 

While overall the story was pretty enjoyable, the beginning was a big of a slog. Somehow the author both over-describes and under-describes.. and I've genuinely never seen that before. Meaning, she'll give an eye-view of nearly everything the character comes across, but she doesn't actually describe any of it in enough detail so as to be easily visualized or memorable. The overuse of group names within the order is also a bit out of hand.  

 

Fortunately, after the first third or so of the novel, that clears up as the plot itself becomes more dense. The book is definitely still worth a read, as it improves considerably from that point on and by the halfway mark or so, I didn't want to put it down anymore. If you're sensitive to graphic scenes, blood, gore, or death.. this book might not be for you. 

(I received this title as an ARC. All opinions are mine and freely given.)