I was provided a free eARC of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review (oops, forgot to add this earlier!)

hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooly shit dog what a book to read as my second book of 2025. homoerotic relationships full of violence and yearning; cannibalism; "hey did anyone else notice the divine seems awfully fucked up?"; what if The Terror was more of a fever dream and was about women during a siege.

We follow a madwoman and heretic, a knight impossibly tangled in the leash of duty and loyalty, and a young woman with a bloody past and indomitable will to survive. There is a lot said about each of them, each character is fully constructed, clearly motivated, but Starling is an author who trusts the reader. So much is also left just unsaid, just out of sight, not in a frustrating way but in the way that you would say something to a loved one with a significant look and they'd understand exactly what you mean. The knight is never called a dog or a hound directly...Starling doesn't need to do that. The metaphors are enough.

Starling trusts readers to a degree that I found thrilling, though to talk about it in detail is a spoiler.

Never once are the not-saints named as fae or fairy, even though that is clearly either what they are or a strong influence on the type of creature they are. It's not necessary. All the pieces are on the table for the reader to understand what's happening, and the characters are too busy living the story to stop and name anything, they've got to stay alive, after all.

It's a marvelous bit of complete trust in both her ability as an author and readers' ability to comprehend what she's doing and I wish more authors would be so brave! Nothing at all is lost, in fact much is gained.

Having read this and The Death of Jane Lawrence by Starling as well, I can really see her craft improving (Jane Lawrence is a good book, this imo is a great book) and I'm excited to continue reading her books!