Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - Star Eater

Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

anxiousnachos's review

dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.25

It has been MONTHS since I last had a book I enjoyed so much it made me stay up late, needing to read on. This is such a dark horror fantasy: every single detail you find out about this world just makes it more and more fucked up and I loved it. And whilst we’re on it, I thought the worldbuilding was excellent. I loved the slow build of detail and information about the world, like slowly creating a more and more fucked up impression of the world as the plot got more and more intense.

Star Eater is a pacy, gruesome and gory horror fantasy about a murder mystery with cannibalistic government nuns and cats the size of horses and sexually transmitted zombieism. There are definitely problems! The ending is very rushed, the epilogue comes out of nowhere and it could of have had an extra 20-30 pages to end the book properly. And as other reviewers have pointed out, it’s weird how there’s no mention of trans/nonbinary people in such a queer-norm world?

But the vibes were so perfect for me and I can’t remember the last time I flew through a book like I did this.

Content warnings: Graphic blood and gore, graphic cannibalism, rape, forced impregnation, hallucinations, eating disorder, violence, murder, attempted murder, abortion, child death, child abuse, death

Content Warnings

sambutwithbooks's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

This was a cool twist on the genre but tbh I wanted more horror from a book casually described on Twitter as "cannibal nuns". I loved when the book actually leaned into the body horror aspects of the plot but when it came to the actual uh, cannibalism....it fell short.

Especially when El learns that she's a rare type of nun whose body, when consumed to excess, would make the person eating her super powerful- I never really felt the urgency of her being basically hunted for nearly half the book.

Another issue I fought with was how binary the plot was. The characters- especially the women- are incredibly queer but there's practically no room made for trans or non-binary characters in this world.

The ending was a little too neatly tied up but at the end of the day I did mostly enjoy this book, I just wanted a little more from it.

Content Warnings