Review: Star Eater by Kerstin Hall

Star Eater by Kerstin Hall
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book is not for the faint of heart. There are some fairly grisly moments in this book. If blood, zombies, or cannibalism bother you in any way, this is not going to be the book for you. I believe this is an adult book, but the characters and tropes feel very YA. You've got an interesting magic system, a chosen one, a rebellion, political intrigue, and a awkward romance.

I'm torn on how to rate this. There were parts that I enjoyed and parts that I felt were under developed. I was provided an audio copy via Netgalley and it is over 15 hours long. That is fairly long for an audiobook, and I felt that it dragged on in places without moving the plot along or answering my questions about what was happening and why. I had to keep going back and re-listening to parts because I felt like I missed something, only to discover that I had not missed anything. I did enjoy the narrator, and felt she did a good job distinguishing between the various characters. There are lots of characters to keep track of, and having a unique voice for each of them made it easier to distinguish them all and keep them straight while listening.

This book had so much potential, but I was confused for most of the book. The premise of the magic system is really unique and interesting, but it isn't explained until about 80% into the book. Even at that point the source of the magic isn't clearly explained, but you at least get some explanation as to how the sisterhood obtained their magic and how the island ended up in the air. There was a general lack of explanation for many of the functional concepts of this world and the lack of world building really is a let down for me. I think my main issue with this is that there were too many plot lines and none of them were developed enough for my liking. It wasn't until the 80% mark of the book that we finally get some answers to things that should have been brought up in the first few chapters.

The book is based on a matriarchal society where a sisterhood of magical women basically run everything on an island floating in the air. As I mentioned we don't come to know why the island was raised from the lands below until almost the end of the book. The sister all have magic called lace, but to maintain their power they must consume the blood and flesh of their mothers in a ritualistic fashion. Sisters are martyred at a certain point to fuel the magic of the rest of the sisterhood. To continue the bloodlines, sisters are forced to have sex with criminals because the act of sex turns men into bloodthirsty haunts aka zombies. Again we don't find out why until the very end of the book.

As stated earlier, I was provided an audio ARC via Netgalley and all opinions stated are my own.

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