#star eater

[mothmussy]

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[sunnyxiv]

|| The Black Sun never rises, because the Black Sun never set. ||

Art by the amazing Dr_Voronin on Twitter.

[marisr3stavrant]

[leafaske]

Piece I made for the 2021 Monster Challenge :)

[aroaessidhe]

I went to the library sale :) i am a picky bastard and only got hardcovers with the removable dustjacket covers , so they're pristine on the outside! I've read the wayward children books, the others are on my tbr.

[cibguts]

Revenge on Moosifurr

[alexanderlightweight]

Hi! I feel a little bad prompting two weeks in a row, but if you feel up to it could you maybe do some more stuff with the sentient shadow au? I love it so much, I would love to see the progression of Alec and Magnus’ relationship (maybe through an outside pov, if you want).

I hope you have fun with this and enjoy your Wednesday!

here we go! also no worries, plenty of people prompt every week and there is nothing wrong with that. the prompts are all happy things for me, not burdens. so don't feel bad kay? plus i love starting to recognize names of those who prompt!

i'm greatly enjoying this wednesday and the last ones! i hope you are doing well and having a good day!

hope you enjoy

lumine

-

“I cannot believe you!” Magnus seethes the moment Alec is gone and Ragnor sighs and takes a deep puff of his pipe. “How could you have been hiding such a delectable treasure from me?”

“Magnus, I have a contract and an oath that restrict me.” Which is something of an over exaggeration but Ragnor is tired and he doesn’t want to deal with Magnus’ outrage.

There’s a huff and finally Magnus settles for a moment before he adds, “so what is he like?”

“Aren’t you going to want to find out on your little ‘thank you’ dinner?” Ragnor teases and it earns him a cold, sharp eyeroll. “Fine, ducky. Ruin my rare fun. The lad’s incredibly intelligent and calculating, or at least he normally is. It seems you rather turn his thoughts around.”

Magnus almost looks unbearably smug at that, but Magnus wears smug well and so Ragnor sighs and just relights his pipe.

“He’s both incredibly perceptive and incredibly sheltered about certain things.”

“Like?” Magnus demands, summoning himself a glass of whiskey as he gives Ragnor a viciously impatient look.

“Like casual intimacy. Or consider the power of touch, of which he knows little of. Alec lives in relative isolation from other people in the embrace of his powers. They’ve always protected and comforted him, and he relies on them, which mean very few are allowed to approach him.”

“They’re not merely powers.” Magnus muses and Ragnor nods his head, unable to say more due to oaths but wanting to warn Magnus. Alec himself isn’t the only obstacle in this that Magnus will face, Alec’s shadows will be the true obstacle. 

“I’m sure I can woo the entirety of him,” Magnus drawls smugly and he gives Ragnor a curious look. “What do they like?”

“They’re hungry, Magnus. Greedy and powerful and they only care for Alec. They’re incredibly dangerous and not to be underestimated, even by you.”

—

Magnus shows up nearly every day after that for a week, as if he’s hoping Alec will drop by again, which was rare enough the first time.

Finally, after much exasperation, Ragnor has had enough.

“Why not just go to the New York Institute, instead of portaling all the way over here?” Ragnor questions, cross after Magnus has come over and stolen the last of Ragnor’s favorite biscuits. A specific type that are warded by their baker against being summoned.

Ragnor will have to request a new delivery by fire message and he scowls at the additional work. He’d been hoping to avoid that until the next day at least.

“What do you mean the New York Institute?” Magnus drawls, “why would I go over there when I want to see my darling Alexander? Not some boring cannon fodder hunters.”

“Because your darling,” Ragnor says rolling his eyes, “is the Head and Commander of the New York Institute, Magnus. Weren’t you paying attention? I did mention it.”

“It wasn’t as important as getting him to agree to dinner—” Magnus tells him. “And you haven’t mentioned again at any point in this last week because?”

“Frankly, I have better things than just assume that you no longer listen to me at all.” Ragnor retorts and he summons a new cup of tea with a sigh. “I’m far too tired for all this nonsense Magnus, go woo the lad and come back once you have your boy. Perhaps with your influence, I’ll see him more than a handful of times a year.”

“Oh, you’ll be seeing plenty of him.” Magnus promises with a leer and Ragnor flicks him with magic.

“No! I’ve helped raise that lad since he was a wee one, Magnus. I’ll not have you telling me about how you plan to deflower him or anything else. This is one relationship where you will have to rely on Cat alone to pander compliments to your ego. Bring the lad around for tea and know that you’ll be staying clothed in my abode.”

“Deflower?”

Ragnor groans wishing he’s said defile and knowing he’s about to hit every one of Magnus’ possessive, covetous and prideful instincts with his words.

“The lad’s not shy Magnus. He doesn’t blush, he doesn’t stutter, he doesn’t get entranced. This isn’t a normal reaction for him. I’m fairly certain there is a graveyard somewhere dedicated to people who made the mistake of hitting on him. Alec generally considers it a nuisance. I hope you can understand what I mean and treat him well.”

Ragnor doesn’t say anything else, because he’s said enough and while he’ll step in if he feels he needs to, he trusts Magnus enough to let him try first.

“Thank you, Ragnor. Even if you did let me suffer for a week.”

Ragnor rolls his eyes and waves his hand in farewell as Magnus portals away.

[lotitheism]

um tumblr literally doesn't care about my ocs but screw you. uploading this is an obligation to me to finish it beyond this horrifically rough animatic. star-eater content for the stragglers out there (my friends)

[citygirlrat]

star eater

[cosmicgardencreative]

New Arrival

Here's some art from another project - Star Eater. 

It's in super early development, but we wanted to show off the quick sketch and flats of Claif, one of the two MCs of this bloody, fanservice-y scifi story. Like with Sweet Nightmares, we draw from a variety of mythologies, but it leans more heavily into some Biblical lore (talking about angels and demons, but framed more as mysterious alien races which some people trust and some don't). 

Claif, assumed an orphan, has been raised by some empathetic aliens far away from any human colonies all his life. Then in his young-adulthood, he started experiencing some behavior problems that were chalked up to his alien adoptive community not knowing how to properly raise a human. He finally decides to leave and meet other humans for the first time and "learn how to be what he is"... 

... Only to finally arrive at the human capitol colony and discover... he isn't one of them?! 🔪👀 

*Art by Ismaire

[orez-suke]

Halley

[kazz-brekker]

For book asks: 6, 7, and 9!

Thanks!

6. What is your favorite book to recommend?

I think it depends on the person I'm talking to, but lately at the bookstore I work at there's been a TON of people looking for Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross, which is currently out of stock, so I like to recommend them one of her other books, A River Enchanted, since it's a really good Scottish-inspired fantasy with faeries, bard magic, and some excellent romances.

7. What book do you love but usually not recommend because it’s weird or intense, etc?

A few years ago I read Star Eater by Kerstin Hall, which was super weird and unique in a way I found really interesting and engaging, but I've never had a chance to recommend it to anyone because "fantasy novel starring bisexual cannibal nuns who live on a floating island and push men off it when they turn into zombies" is such a bizarre premise that I've never found a good time to rec it to someone. But hey, if anyone sees this post and that sounds like your kind of thing, please check it out!

9. What series has most disappointed you?

Probably the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas–I was a huge fan of the earlier books when I was in middle school/early high school, but the further the series progressed, the more I was turned off by the focus shifting to alpha male romance and the main character's unchecked arrogance. I kept reading the books even after they started to go downhill for me, but I was disappointed enough by them that I never finished the series.

[ithiliosstarstrider]

Sometimes looking in the mirror can be difficult until you embrace it.

Art by NutCharodey

[zvjezdojedac]

P.s.

I hate this piece with burning passion, but I spent so much time on it and if I'm fulled by anything it's my anger and spite so I'm sharing <3.

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

Star Eater

fantasy world under religious rule by an order of nuns who practice ritualistic cannibalism to gain magic

one young Sister who’s plagued by visions wants to get out, and ends up caught in the complex politics between factions vying for power and the revolution wanting to get rid of them

[rhetoricandlogic]

In Star Eater, Kerstin Hall Creates a World Like No Other

Molly Templeton Tue Jun 22, 2021 11:30am

Engrossing, horrifying, and vivid, Kerstin Hall’s debut novel Star Eater is a hard one to talk about. This is in part simply because there’s so much there there—so much inventive worldbuilding, so much carefully structured power, so many things I want to exclaim over. As with many complicated things, it’s occasionally boiled down to something both accurate and not, a hook like “cannibal cat-riding nuns in space!”

This description isn’t wrong, but it’s nowhere near the whole picture, either. There are cats the size of horses; there are cannibal not-really-nuns and horrifying zombies (called Haunts); there is something weird about the world of Aytrium, with its Pillars and vague references to the Edge. But this isn’t a book about the meticulously created world. It’s about corrupted power, and the sacrifices necessary for change.

Star Eater expects you to pay attention from the very first scene, when we meet Acolyte Elfreda Raughn in the midst of what ought to be a typical day. The ritual she’s performing with other Sisters is casually discussed, but like so much else in this novel, central to the world Hall builds. In Aytrium, everything has a reason, a cause and effect, from the terrifying Haunts that appear in the fields to the food shortages to the visions that plague Elfreda.

There are no infodumps here, but there is a lot of backstory, carefully woven into the plot and revealed gradually as Elfreda is swept up into a complicated conspiracy that reaches to the very center of her world. Like all Sisters, Elfreda was born into the Order: their power is inherited and inescapable, and brings with it certain responsibilities, some of which are deeply distasteful. There are things Elfreda can live with—the Haunts, the bureaucracy, even the hallucinations. But when it comes to replenishing her lace (the magic power wielded by Sisters) and the Renewal ceremonies through which new Sisters are bred … El will never fully accept those things.

And it’s that resistance that sets her story in motion.

There’s also a capital-R Resistance among the ordinary people of Aytrium, who don’t have an abundance of love for the Order. But while the Sisters’ power is absolute, it’s also fractured. The Resistance falls somewhat by the wayside, narratively speaking, because the Order is plenty busy tearing itself apart.

As Elfreda is drawn into the power struggles among Sisters, the details of her life begin to grow more important: There’s the mystery of her mother’s early martyring, the tragic story of her friends Mille and Finn’s parents, the horrible murder of her work supervisor. With so much at play, the sprawling cast can get a little hard to juggle, and some of the relationships never quite click. (Also, the gender/power divide makes me wonder how trans and nonbinary people fit into this world.)

But much of what interests me in Star Eater goes beyond the details, and the characters, and into the shape of the story. It begins slowly, a precisely paced adding-up of things that are weird (to us, or to Elfreda) or horrible or somehow out of tune. There’s a beautiful detail about a song the workers sing—and the much bloodier version of the lyrics that were sung years ago. Who changed them? How? And what were they hiding?

The shape of the story is a pyramid, and at the start we can only see the point, the things Elfreda notices as she goes about her increasingly tense days. There’s much she takes for granted, and a reader has to wait to fully understand. But as the novel progresses, it’s a steady passage downward, learning more, putting pieces together, revealing more of the whole, until at the end, so much happens so quickly that at first, it feels a little rushed.

But this is a story about change centuries in the making. The tale began with the Eater herself, a figure now passed mostly into myth, who saved Aytrium hundreds of years ago. It ends with Elfreda, whose role is somewhat foreordained and yet also up to her. The arc of the story is the arc of this whole world’s existence. It takes time to build a new world, to lift it up from the ruins of the old. It takes much less time to tear it all down again.

Star Eater is a magical consideration of what it means to destroy a power structure. It’s an intimate, gripping exploration of what people are willing to do to maintain the systems that they believe maintain the world; it’s also a story that asks what doors might be opened if we could truly envision a world unlike the one we live in now.. Hall mixes her unique worldbuilding with familiar tropes—the chosen one, the love triangle(ish), the conspiracy, the mentor figures, the loss of a mother—and the combination creates a book that feels both familiar and unnervingly strange.

It’s a struggle to think of a book that Star Eater is more than vaguely comparable to. There is one scene that recalls a ghastly twist on an element from The Handmaid’s Tale, and Hall’s immersive worldbuilding reminded me just a bit of N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, on a smaller and far less geologic scale. But I read Star Eater right on the heels of Hannah Whitten’s For the Wolf, and saw unexpected parallels between the two: worlds where women have power but it’s still used against them; stories that make explicit a struggle between power and freedom, power and choice. Both are books that say this is how it’s been, but not how it has to be—and stories about how in order to rebuild, you have to be willing to face the truth of what came before.