Reviews with content warning for Child death - The Hunger

Gruesome twist on a true story. I'm not overly acquainted with the true story, so I don't feel like I was able to appreciate this book as much as perhaps I could have.

Adding a wendigo vibe to a tale of cannibalism isn't exactly groundbreaking, but it was still interesting. I don't feel like all the questions were answered sufficiently. Specifically I feel the part of the story with Edwin Bryant felt unfinished.

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smolhandsdan's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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glassflowrr's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

Solid story with some amazing moments of terror and gore. I really enjoyed the pacing. There are a few too many POV characters to keep track of and some aren't very well-developed as voices, but the good ones are very interesting to be with.

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thedemonastagoth's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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lacea's review against another edition

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dark sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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singlier's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

The Hunger 1.5/5 🐂s by Alma Katsu

Oh I wanted to enjoy this book and I was so excited to give it a read. The Hunger is a horror retelling of the ill-fated Donner Party expedition during the mid 1800s, weaving real life histories and people with a supernatural twist of horror and fear.

But it just... Didn't hit. There were a lot of narrator characters (around 5: Edwin Bryant, Charles Stanton, James Reed, Tamsen Donner, and Elitha Graves) and I never really got close to any of them or felt a strong connection to them. The way the book is ordered, often something important would happen to a character, but it wouldn't be until the next chapter that it's revealed *why*.

Also, there are just...a ton of characters and a few chapters in I just gave up trying to keep who's who straight: who was cousins with who, who was the daughter-in-law of who, who was who's son or the servants of who, so on. Rarely so I ask for this, but I really wished to have a family tree in the beginning to keep things straight.

The book struggles most notably with its treatment of Native American practices, quickly falling into the ideas of "Indigenous mysticism" as soon as things turn awry. Maybe it's playing off the beliefs of the settlers, but for once I'd like a horror where there wasn't "an old Native American folktale detailing this exact horror situation" going on, you know? Also, negative a million points for using the s-term to describe the collection of symptoms (cannibalism, violence, etc) of the settlers. Turning them into "creatures less than human" felt like it took away from the horror of the situation of the Donner Party: the scariest thing of all is realizing that even "good" people are not exempt from evil, and will commit atrocious acts to their fellow people in acts of survival or desperation.

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