Alma Katsu

As featured in The New York Times Book Review Summer Reading Issue "Supernatural suspense at its finest...The best thing about The Hunger is that it will scare the pants off you."--The New York Times Book Review "Deeply, deeply disturbing, hard to put down, not recommended reading after dark."--Stephen King A tense and gripping reimagining of one of America's most fascinating historical moments: the Donner Party with a supernatural twist. Evil is invisible, and it is everywhere. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the isolated travelers to the brink of madness. Though they dream of what awaits them in the West, long-buried secrets begin to emerge, and dissent among them escalates to the point of murder and chaos. They cannot seem to escape tragedy...or the feelings that someone--or something--is stalking them. Whether it's a curse from the beautiful Tamsen Donner (who some think might be a witch), their ill-advised choice of route through uncharted terrain, or just plain bad luck, the ninety men, women, and children of the Donner Party are heading into one of one of the deadliest and most disastrous Western adventures in American history. As members of the group begin to disappear, the survivors start to wonder if there really is something disturbing, and hungry, waiting for them in the mountains...and whether the evil that has unfolded around them may have in fact been growing within them all along. Effortlessly combining the supernatural and the historical, The Hunger is an eerie, thrilling look at the volatility of human nature, pushed to its breaking point.

The Hunger

"A retelling of the fate of the Donner Party, with a Walking Dead style twist"--

Ryan Mateyk

Pretty engrossing! I think the Donner party is such an interesting and horrific part of history, and this take (Donner party ft... zombie/monster/human things?) was smart and original.

Lindy

A complete waste of both setting and premise, and the author overexplains every plot point like she can't trust the reader to put two and two together.

Committed the cardinal sin of making cannibalism boring. 

sunny

Ryan LaFerney

** spoiler alert **
           2.5 stars rounded up to 3 stars for sheer artistry.

The Hunger will be a great read for the right reader - if you like historical fiction with a bit of spookiness, or paranormal westerns, this book will probably be for you but it wasn't completely for me. I appreciated this novel but I did not love it. 

With that being said The Hunger is a well written, well researched slow burn of a horror/historical fiction novel. In the prologue, set in April 1847, a team of rescuers sets out to find the last survivor of the expedition, Lewis Keseberg, but they locate only his abandoned cabin. “What looked like a human vertebra, cleaned of skin” and a “scattering of teeth” lie outside in the snow. Flash back to June 1846. George Donner is leading a wagon train to California. Those headed west often leave letters under rocks in the hope that an eastbound traveler will retrieve them and take them to the nearest post office. In one place, one of Donner’s teenage daughters finds hundreds of such letters, all with the ominous message: “Turn back or you will die.” Then a young boy disappears and is later found savagely mutilated, as if by an animal. The members of the party come to suspect that shape-changers are responsible for the carnage, and they encounter increasing challenges to their survival....The party states to discover further remains. One of their dogs tastes what little flesh remains, then bites his owner. And within little more than a week, the man will undergo a frightening transformation, from a meek, sickly individual to something aggressive, feral – and hungry. The identity of the creatures that have been trailing the wagon-train slide into focus: they are a form of lycanthrope (Lycanthropy is the mythological ability or power of a human being to undergo transformation into an animal like state, such as a werewolf) and they are deadly. As the party’s situation grows steadily worse, so does the creatures’ menace increase.

It is interesting that Katsu decides to opt out of making the lycanthrope a symbol for the Native Americans, but instead uses the ravenously hungry monsters as a trope for the appetites that drove many of the settlers to leave their homes and join the wagon train. The appetite or the "hunger" of the man-wolves symbolize the white man's desire to dominate women, to dominate land, to dominate others. I can appreciate this. To be honest, most of the men in the wagon party scared the shit out of me as they were as opposed them turning into man wolves. Many of the men were already brutes to begin with. 

While the creatures' meance increase as our characters of the story glide to their inevitable fate, I never did feel the tension or the fear profoundly...maybe that's because I know the fate of the party? Maybe the thrill of horror is gone when you know the outcome (um, the party all dies)?

I must note the characterization of the book is completely well done (as stated I hated many of male characters - and I think that's to Katsu's credit), but sadly, I just didn't connect wholly to this one. 

 I enjoyed Alma Katsu's creativity, and despite my low rating for this book, I think Katsu is in fact a talented author who came up with a very intriguing novel. I just might not be a huge fan of historical fiction or paranormal westerns. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Celeste Richardson

Readers know how this book will end before even starting the first chapter. After all, the Donner Party is one of the most famous factual examples of cannibalism in the Western world. If you’re reading a book about the Donner Party, you know without a doubt that things aren’t going to end well. No matter how these characters strive toward their goal, you know most of them will not only not make it to the end, they will end up being eaten by the members of the party who remain. Because of this, every page of Alma Katsu’s The Hunger ratchets up the tension and unease as you close in on the inevitable outcome. 
“Evil was invisible, and it was everywhere.”
There’s a weird sensuality to everything in this book, including the eponymous hunger. But even before the hunger arrives, almost every interaction is strangely, sexually charged. Uncomfortably so. Even a beating could be disturbingly sexualized in the minds of both abuser and abused. We think of the past as being simpler and easier and more innocent because it was different. However, history is as dramatic as any soap opera. And sexual appetites were just as repressed and perverse and all-consuming as their can be in our modern world. I did find quite a bit of the interpersonal interactions eye-rollingly melodramatic, but I’ve never been one to handle unnecessary drama very well. It’s why I don’t read more Young Adult novels.
“The world was fragile. One day, growth; the next day, kindling.”
The characters here were interesting, but I never fell in love with any of them. I think the reason for that is two-fold. First of all, I knew better than to get attached because I knew most of them we’re going to die. Secondly, even though Katsu did her best to show each member’s strengths and failings, she mostly conveyed their desires and struggles instead of any true personality traits. We’re more than the sum of our parts, but that wasn’t demonstrated in The Hunger. But as the book is literally all about hungers and desires, this choice could have been purposeful. Speaking of those hungers, Katsu did a good job of presenting the dichotomy between superstition and science, the supernatural and the medical, in her presentation of cannibalism. It was incredibly disturbing. 
“I don’t believe in monsters… Only men who behave like them.”
If you enjoy historical fiction with an edge, The Hunger is the book for you. It’ll make you incredibly paranoid about ensuring that your pantry is always full. So maybe wait until the world calms back down a bit before picking this one up. Should you decide to read this book, just be sure that your stomach is strong enough to handle it.

You can find  this review and more at Novel Notions.

"Deeply, deeply disturbing, hard to put down, not recommended reading after dark." --Stephen King A tense and gripping reimagining of one of America's most haunting human disasters: the Donner Party with a supernatural twist. Evil is invisible, and it is everywhere. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the isolated travelers to the brink of madness. Though they dream of what awaits them in the West, long-buried secrets begin to emerge, and dissent among them escalates to the point of murder and chaos, unknowingly propelling them into one of the deadliest and most disastrous Western adventures in American history. As members of the group begin to disappear, the survivors start to wonder if there really is something disturbing, and hungry, waiting for them in the mountains...and whether the evil that has unfolded around them may have in fact been growing within them all along. Effortlessly combining the supernatural and the historical, The Hunger is an eerie, thrilling look at the volatility of human nature, pushed to its breaking point.

Elizabeth Neill

I have always been fascinated with The Donner party and why they did what they did. As I read this book, I looked up the timelines and the people in it. That made reading it a little funner for me. I liked that I could put a picture of the names. I felt that I was on the trip with them and felt the fear. If I didn’t need sleep, I would have finished this in a day. Though I did give it four stars instead of five because at some parts it did feel like it dragged on. Other than that it kept me entertained and it made me look at hunger in a different way. Not just hunger for food but for an escape from your past. A hunger for love and a place to belong and much more. I will be picking up their other book The Deep very soon.

I'll say closer to 4.5 stars

This was great! Very well-written, had me hooked even when it was a bit slow-paced. I love books like that, where I feel invested even when there's not a lot of action.

There were a few too many secondary characters whose names I couldn't keep straight (not that it made much of an impact on my understanding of the story, just found it frustrating when I couldn't remember who certain people were) and I wish the ending were more climactic, but overall I really enjoyed this book!

Ruth Parker 

This book was a bit of a disappointment to me. I thought the beginning was really interesting and I was super excited to get into the horror and gore and be freaked out, but instead I found myself a bit bored.

Casie Blevins

This was a slow burn of a novel but I enjoyed it a lot. I liked the character backgrounds, weaving in and out of the past to give more meaning to the present predicaments of the characters. Well done.

Jules

Mia 

Kellie Rittershausen

Ruthie Akin

Melissa Railey

Amulya Garimella

"Deeply, deeply disturbing, hard to put down, not recommended reading after dark." - Stephen KingAfter having travelled west for weeks, the party of pioneers comes to a crossroads. It is time for their leader, George Donner, to make a choice. They face two diverging paths which lead to the same destination. One is well-documented - the other untested, but rumoured to be shorter.Donner?s decision will shape the lives of everyone travelling with him. The searing heat of the desert gives way to biting winds and a bitter cold that freezes the cattle where they stand. Driven to the brink of madness, the ill-fated group struggles to survive and minor disagreements turn into violent confrontations. Then the children begin to disappear. As the survivors turn against each other, a few begin to realise that the threat they face reaches beyond the fury of the natural elements, to something more primal and far more deadly.Based on the true story of The Donner Party, The Hungeris an eerie, shiver-inducing exploration of human nature, pushed to its breaking point.

The Hunger

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