The grimdark wave of fantasy fiction went mainstream when Game of Thrones hit big on HBO, and now even casual readers of the subgenre can get bogged down in its conventions. Yes, morally gray characters, graphic violence and the cruelty of medieval Europe-style worlds are all rich storytelling veins, but they only get you so far, which means when an author comes along and seeks to reshape that darkness into something unique, it’s worth paying attention.
With her latest novel, The Starving Saints, Caitlin Starling does not seek to subvert the conventions of grimdark fantasy, nor does she aim to overturn or look past them. What the novel delivers is something more transformative, a melding of fantasy and horror so smooth that it defies both easy categorization and easy dismissal as another traveler of a well-worn path. Like the characters at its core, it’s a hard novel to pin down.
Set in a castle now in its sixth month under siege, The Starving Saints follows three desperate women all trying to save themselves. Phosyne, a former nun turned sorceress, labors in her tower laboratory to magically create food for the starving populace. Ser Voyne, a war hero and the king’s closest guardian, is tasked with protecting the castle while also making sure Phosyne isn’t just wasting everyone’s time. And in the bowels of the keep, serving girl-turned-ratcatcher Treila is biding her time until she can escape, even as she plots revenge against Voyne for a long-ago atrocity.
All three of their already challenging lives are upset by the sudden and mysterious arrival of the Constant Lady, the deity worshiped by the people of the castle, and her three attendant Saints. Beautifully dressed, hypnotic and incomprehensible, these Saints supply the castle with a sudden influx of much-needed food, but at a tremendous cost, sending all three protagonists into a spiral of shifting loyalties, desires and desperation.
Starling quickly and vividly lays the foundation of a classic fantasy setting, her prose rich with descriptions that’ll make you feel grit under your fingernails and sense magic around the darkest, dampest corners of the castle, but what makes The Starving Saints so remarkable is what Starling does next. There’s a sense that “weird fiction” is invading the fantasy setting, unnameable and unknowable things slithering (often literally) through the stone and wood of the keep. Through prose that’s as rich in mystery and desperation as the lives of her characters, Starling weaves in elements that keep the reader constantly off balance, yet she never leaves us feeling lost. There’s always the sense of something darker and more uncanny looming over the castle, closing in as its entire state of being shifts. This is a novel that doesn’t just creep into your mind, it chills you to your core and dares you to keep reading.
The Starving Saints is that rare book that gives fantasy and horror readers what they want in equal measure—a remarkable, strange, unsettling ride that will bewitch you on every page.
