Review: The Hunger by Alma Katsu

The Hunger by Alma Katsu
Also by this author: The Deep, Red Widow
Published by Penguin on March 6, 2018
Genres: Fiction, Historical, Occult & Supernatural, Psychological, Thrillers
Pages: 384
Format: ARC

The fate of the Donner Party, a wagon train heading west for new opportunities, is riddled with danger and despair. The travel isn't easy, plagued by numerous misfortunes that make the group of travelers question their decision to move west.  Each of them dream of a new future and opportunities, many attempting to bury secrets that lay waiting in their past.

As their fates and wills are tested, these secrets begin to unfold. They are unable to escape the tragedies that seem to follow them on their journey.  Rather than accepting the blame themselves, they find the need to blame it on external factors...namely Tamsen Donner, whom many believe to be a witch.

It's not only a doomed fate that follows the ninety-members of the Donner Party, but an evil that surrounds them, one that has been curating within them for the entire journey.

We’re all familiar with the story of the Donner party. The story that most of us learned in history class was of a group of travelers during the great Westward Expansion.  Trapped by a difficult terrain, their only means to survive was to eat the flesh of their own.  Yet what Katsu has done in this brilliantly crafted retelling is to add a dark and supernatural reasoning behind their decisions.

Because Katsu uses a few choice characters to relay this story, readers get a truly personal narrative of the fate of the Donner party. We know their motives for the journey, at least on the surface, and eventually uncover the secrets that lay just below the surface, secrets worth dying for.

The path they take is vast and undeveloped, giving a feeling of isolation and desperation.  That soon is felt by those in the traveling party, especially when members of the party, both animal and human, begin disappearing. Unable, or perhaps unwilling, to accept this new deadly fate, they begin in-fighting, leaving them even more vulnerable than when they started.

Katsu’s story is an epic one, and like all epics it is not one that is quickly relayed but instead one that should be slowly savored. Only in doing so will the reader get the full impact of this truly remarkable read.  Highly, highly recommended.