Here’s a tip: If the castle you live in is under siege, and there’s no way to defend it, get out however you can, even if it means working with people you dislike.
Don’t believe me? Just ask the ladies at the center of author Caitlin Starling’s medieval fantasy horror novel The Starving Saints (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), who hate each other but must collaborate if they want to live another day.
In the following email interview, Starling talks about what inspired and influenced this story, as well as how this story was originally going to be told interactively.
To start, what is The Starving Saints about, and when and where does it take place?
The Starving Saints is the story of a castle under siege, its desperate inhabitants, and the strange and impossible rescuers that appear from nothing bearing wondrous feasts.
It’s also the story of three women who hate each other, but have no choice but to work together to try to get out alive before the madness of an everlasting feast consumes them.
Where did you get the idea for The Starving Saints, and how different is the finished story from what you originally conceived?
It actually started as a pitch for Choice Of Games [a video game company who make interactive fiction]. I had the first broad strokes: castle under siege, cannibalism, otherworldly visitors, dangerous bargains. And I had three classic character archetypes to choose between: knight, sorceress, and thief.
By the time it grew into a book, I wanted all three roles to exist in the story, and be completely intertwined and knotted up in one another. They grew into:
— Treila de Batrolin, a disgraced noblewoman masquerading as a rat catcher and glove maker in order to put food on the table and get revenge on.
— Ser Voyne, war hero turned trophy knight, relegated to looking pretty next to her king until she’s assigned to “manage.”
— Phosyne, an excommunicated nun who is either completely insane, or tapping into a magic that shouldn’t exist.
And along with Phosyne’s magic and her previous beliefs came the exact shape of the miraculous Constant Lady and Her saints.
Now, in The Starving Saints, Ser Voyne, Phosyne, and Treila are the only ones who see this situation for what it is. Why did you decide to have it be three women as opposed to two or four? Or, for that matter, three women as opposed to three men or two women and a man or some other combination?
I just like writing about women. It’s how I would have created those characters in a video game. This book does have a more balanced approach to gender than some of my others (the saints present mostly as men, and the king and Ser Leodegardis also have prominent roles), but that was more incidental than intentional.
Also, doesn’t The Constant Lady just sound iconic?
The Starving Saints is clearly a fantasy novel, but it seems like it might be a medieval fantasy or, given your previous novels, fantasy horror…
I’d say fantasy horror. But it’s also emphatically a fantasy rooted in European (largely French) medieval history, from the design of the castle to the alchemical bits and bobs worked into the plot.
The Starving Saints is your fourth novel and sixth book overall. Are there any other authors, or specific stories, that had a big influence on Saints but not on anything else you’ve written?
Shakespeare, unexpectedly. See if you can spot a few references.
How about such non-literary influences as movies, TV shows, or games? Was The Starving Saints influenced by any of those things?
Does Hannibal fanfiction count?
I’m sort of joking, but not entirely. I was deep into Hannibal fanfiction land before, during, and after writing this book (though I will say quickly that the cannibalism was a part of the story from well before that). There’s a certain dreamlike horrific unreality that some Hannibal fanfiction just revels in that helped loosen up my concept of how I could tell the story.
There’s also a bit of Shoujo Kakumei Utena in there too, if at a pretty far remove; it was a formative anime for me.
Fantasy stories, horror flavored or otherwise, are sometimes stand-alone tales and sometimes part of larger sagas. What is The Starving Saints?
Entirely self-contained…for now. I have further ideas for the wider setting but nothing formal yet. It wouldn’t be a direct sequel though, more another story in a shared world, maybe with a few cameos.
Now, along with The Starving Saints, you have two other novels out or coming soon: Last To Leave The Room, the paperback of which came out late last year, and The Graceview Patient, which will be out October 14th. We did a deep dive on Room already, but for people morally opposed to linking, what is that book about and when and where does it take place?
Last To Leave The Room is a contemporary light sci-fi horror / thriller novel (say that five times fast) about an ambitious and amoral researcher, Dr. Tamsin Rivers, who may be responsible for the strange sinking of her city — and for the strange door that has appeared in her basement. When a perfect copy of her comes out of that door, things start to spiral out of control in a mess of memory, identity, and really terrible meal kits.
And then, for The Graceview Patient, what is that novel about and when and where does it take place?
The Graceview Patient is likewise a contemporary lightly speculative horror / thriller — what I like to call a “hospital gothic.” Meg is struggling with a rare autoimmune condition, and has recently lost her few remaining freelance gigs, when she’s offered a spot in a paid medical trial. The only catch is that she’ll have to be admitted for over a month while her team destroys and rebuilds her immune system…and once the experimental medication takes hold, Meg is no longer sure if she’s hallucinating, or if something terrible is stalking her through the hallowed halls of Graceview Memorial.
With this one, I really wanted to dig into what it’s like to be sick, and what it’s like to be a patient, while never just demonizing medical professionals. Things are twisty and complex, and they’re also very traditionally gothic horror in sometimes surprising ways.
In the interview we did about Last To Leave The Room, you said The Graceview Patient was just called Graceview. Is there any significance to the name change?
This one came from the folks at St. Martin’s Press. They wanted to shift the feeling of the title from straight gothic (think, Rebecca) to more of a thriller (think, The Silent Patient). I think the new title is great, and foregrounds a different aspect to the book.
We spoke earlier about how The Starving Saints started out as a game, and was influenced by some TV shows. Do you think Saints could work as a show? Or a movie? And do you still think it could be a game?
I could go either way. Prestige mini-series would always be fun, especially since we’ve described this book as Game Of Thrones meets American Horror Story.
But since the idea started as a story-driven choices-matter style game, I’d love to see it adapted that way, too. Something particularly with trading off character / POV throughout the playthrough, so you’re always torn between acting in the current character’s best interest versus the others’.
So, is there anything else you think potential readers need to know about The Starving Saints?
There’s content warnings on my website, as far as the tough stuff goes. But what I really want folks to know is that I love this book. I wrote it back in 2020, and it’s possessed me ever since. Sure, I’ve written other books since that I also love, but this one? Unholy obsession. Which is pretty apt.
Finally, if someone enjoys The Starving Saints, what horror novel of someone else’s would you suggest they check out next? Oh, and extra points if it’s set in a fantasy realm.
Literally anything by Christopher Buehlman, please and thank you. Between Two Fires for more historically fantastical medieval horror; The Lesser Dead for rancid vampires; The Blacktongue Thief for not-technically-horror adventure fantasy but, uh, still horrifying.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is also not exactly horror, except when it is.
And, of course, almost anything by T. Kingfisher. Even her more romance-focused books can have bucketloads of incidental horror. Looking at you, Paladin’s Hope.
