The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
ARC Review.
Thank you to HarperVoyager for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Genre: adult horror
Publication Date: May 20, 2025
Content warnings: body horror, starvation, religious psychosis (?), cannibalism
Star Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“She is the dark thing in the forest, feral and fierce, feeding herself in his misery.”
Caitlin Starling’s medieval horror The Starving Saints is a sapphic fever dream of a novel. I could not have asked for a more indulgent, strange, and transcendent book. The plot follows three women—Phosyne, Ser Voyne, and Treila—as they try to save their kingdom.
Starvation has descended upon Aymar Castle. On the brink of losing all hope for a miracle, the Constant Lady and other Saints arrive with food aplenty. The long-worshipped figures infiltrate the Castle and its occupants’ minds with ease. Only, the Saints aren’t to be trusted. The food is too good. The adoration too easy. And there is always a cost for salvation.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of this novel is the way it’s written. We as readers unravel the mystery of the Saints and the way their power works along with Phosyne, Ser Voyne, and Treila. As more is revealed, the feverish nature of the prose thickens, and it is to a marvelous effect. The prose will not be for everyone, as it is often laden with mystical imagery and near-nonsensical language, but it was excellent for me. It emphasized the surreal nature of the Saints and the world of Aymar.
The women, though, were the beating heart of the novel. Phosyne is a madwoman who has left her Priory. Ser Voyne is a knight desperately searching for something (or someone) to serve as she begins to question her place. Treila is a young woman set on avenging her father for his execution. Quickly, all three of them are tangled together as each resists the Saints’ salvation, realizing that it is no salvation at all. The relationships that develop between the three women are complicated, delicate, and well-explored. If I had to, I could not pick a favorite character out of the three. Each woman is so well-written, so complex and wholly human, that I came to love one as much as the other. I won’t be forgetting them any time soon.
On a final note, the thematic explorations of power negotiation, religion and faith, and belonging were particularly interesting. It isn’t until the latter half of the novel that power and the way we negotiate it between ourselves and others becomes explicitly explored, but it is nonetheless thought-provoking. This is a novel that will be remembered long after it’s read. If you like strange women and stranger worlds, this novel is for you. I look forward to reading it again someday soon.
Blurb from HarperVoyager:
Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration.
Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. While the war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady, Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl named Treila is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding between Aymar’s walls.
As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness—forgetting the massed army beyond its walls in favor of hedonistic ecstasy—these three women are the only ones to still see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune from the temptations of the castle's new masters… or each other; and their shifting alliances and entangled pasts bring violence to the surface. To save the castle, and themselves, will take a reimagining of who they are, and a reorganization of the very world itself.
Where to Preorder: https://www.caitlinstarling.com/books#StarvingSaints.