They say religion is the opiate of the masses; and I guess if you’ve got nowhere to go, nothing to eat, and are on the verge of dying, something that might create a sense of complacency might just be welcome. 

In other words: Bring on the quiet, furious, violent dystopian nuns. I’m here for it. 

The Unworthy, beyond what you can read in the blurb, is best gone into blind. Written like a memoir, with all the roughness of a beginning writer without an editor on their first draft, our unreliable narrator documents the day-to-day life of the Sacred Sisterhood and the cloistered life they live within the walls of a former monastery. The passages sometimes don’t run linearly, and sometimes they cut off suddenly in the middle of sentences. I loved the intimacy of the writing style, imagining myself enclosed in the narrator’s cell as she tries to write down as much as she can by candlelight each night. There may be no more books, but there will be her history. 

The dark and dirty motivations of organized religion and patriarchy linger even after civilization has come to an end in this book, and that makes dread and horror linger in the background of our narrator’s story. That even though there is only one male living within the walls of the Sacred Sisterhood, he’s the one they all venerate and serve. Even though they’re all women, they’re still stratified as if they have different values attributed to them, especially his right-hand woman. This inequity only stokes divisiveness and cruelty among young women who are already disenfranchised and enraged over the world that has been taken away from them. 

It’s a bleak, yet engrossing read; a very full story that you wouldn’t know is a novella unless you looked. The story feels much more epic than you’d think 198 pages could achieve, engaging you and compelling you to come along and experience what the world after looks like when you reluctantly accept succor. 4⭐️ 

I was provided a copy of this title by the author and publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you. 

File Under: Dystopian Fiction/Horror/Literary Fiction/Novella/Sapphic Romance/Satire/Speculative Fiction