Review: The Luminous Dead

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Luminous Dead is a deeply creepy genre-bending novel of science fiction and psychological horror. It's protagonist, Gyre, is a caver who lied her way into a high-paying job that rapidly turns out to be a nightmare. Expecting a team of topside support, what she gets instead is Em, a young woman who proceeds to leave out vital information about the purpose of her mission, to medicate her into compliance, and most of all to use computer constructs to alter Gyre's visible environs, leaving out a few things like all the dead explorers that were down in this same miserable cave on Cassandra-V before her. And all of that is before she starts seeing odd fungal spores everywhere. (Wait 'til you see what they do....) Or hears the massive tunnelers, subterranean creatures carving through rock.

Starling manages to generate a steadily growing sense of terror/horror in the reader, as Em begins to look more and more like a sociopath, forcing Gyre to make herself palpably human in Em's mind. In the process of doing so, the women bond over their losses of their mothers, Isolde and Peregrine (Em's to a mysterious mission, Gyre's to what she had thought was illegal activity). The writing is excellent but I kept expecting to the plot to deliver some massive twist that it didn't. There are twists mind you, but they felt like they were somehow less explosive than I expected given the way the tension ratchets up continuously. I also felt that the relationship between Gyre and Em was almost Stockholm Syndrome-like on Gyre's end, since the entire experience breaks her psychologically and in a very real way, physically. The relationship felt abusive, even though Gyre had lied her way into the job.

I will definitely pick up the next book Starling writes. But I might need a good glass of wine to steady my nerves if it's like this one.

The audiobook is excellent, by the way.

Content Warnings: claustrophobia, amputation. Sure to give some people nightmares!


I received an Advance Reader Copy of this book from Harper Voyager in exchange for an honest review.

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