Star Eater

Hall’s full-length fantasy debut (after novella The Border Keeper) stumbles over its many plot twists as a young woman becomes entangled in a scheme to undermine the ruling order. The Sisterhood of Aytrium demands grisly sacrifices from its initiates—so when a member of an insurrectionist splinter group within the Sisterhood offers Acolyte Elfreda Raughn an opportunity to get out of the worst of these duties in exchange for spying on their enemies, she gladly accepts. Hall’s prose is vivid and the characterization is incisive as Elfreda’s involvement with the insurrectionists grows and ultimately places a target on her back, but a pile-up of minor plot swerves make for a bumpy reading experience. Insubstantial foreshadowing makes some of these surprises feel like they come out of nowhere while others manipulate insufficiently established loopholes in the rules of the world. Hall expertly shows the day-to-day impact of the sociopolitical aspects of Aytrium, and the system through which magic is inherited plays out in a darkly fascinating way, but some worldbuilding strokes are so subtle as to be easily overlooked. This causes later revelations to fall flat as Elfreda tries to save herself and dismantle the corrupt Sisterhood. Readers who can forgive the flaws, however, will find this a powerful indictment of how power erodes ethics. [em](June) [/em]