![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inverarityA bloody survival horror LitRPG.
Podium Publishing, 2025, 426 pages
Finally a Kindle Unlimited read that held me to the end. But if you don't like ultra-violence and body horror, this is not the book for you. If you do like ultra-violence and body horror, I think this was a good read despite, not because of, the LitRPG elements.
Most LitRPGs are so terrible I don't finish them. All His Angels Are Starving intrigued me because of the title, the cover, and a premise that seemed less derivative than 90% of LitRPGs. "Survival horror" set in a high school — at first I thought it would be a zombie apocalypse with stat blocks. It's not — it's something much more interesting, although at times it seemed like the author was sort of making things up as she went along.
The thing is, it really didn't need to be a LitRPG, and that was the realization I came to partway through. The LitRPG elements were unnecessary except as a gimmick to explain how the protagonist gets powers, and in the end it was everything else that made the novel interesting, while the LitRPG part really didn't make much sense. I can't help wondering if the author was actually inspired by LitRPGs, or really wanted to write a more traditional horror novel but thought making it a LitRPG would tap a larger audience.
Jenny Huang is a high school junior. She's got a difficult relationship with her mother, her stepfather, and her younger stepbrother. The book starts with Jenny being a fairly typical teenage girl, in other words.
Then a dimensional rift opens and her high school is sucked into a void. Monstrous undead-like creatures called "Tarnished Angels" appear and start slaughtering the students and teachers. They are called "Tarnished Angels" by a mysterious system that flashes text in everyone's heads, telling them they are now participating in the Survival Challenge.
Jenny manages to survive the first onslaught, and by luck and determination levels up more rapidly than everyone else. When she reunites with her still-alive best friend and stepbrother (both of whom have also kind of figured out the system and started leveling up), she's an armored death-dealer with a flying golden axe. Her best friend, Susan, has become a healer with a magic pink helmet. The librarian has lost an eye but become an amazon with a spear.
What pulled me in was not Jenny adding to her stats and acquiring power-ups like Savage Throw, but the fighting as she tries to reach Susan (who it turns out she has a crush on) and her stepbrother (whom she never really cared about before but suddenly realizes the meaning of family). Jenny's internal monologues are angsty, adolescent, and desperate in a realistic teen way. One of the things I found compelling about The Hunger Games was that Katniss Everdeen was realistically traumatized by what she went through. All His Angels Are Starving features teenage characters but unlike Hunger Games, it is not YA: imagine a blood-drenched, R-rated Hunger Games, with cannibalism.
This is a very gory novel. Humans and angels tear each other apart in vivid, spurting, guts-on-the-floor detail. Eventually Jenny realizes that she can become more powerful by eating her enemies (there is a lot of descriptive chewing, slurping, sucking, swallowing, and nom-noming), and by the end of the book she's become a tentacled, exoskeletoned Gigeresque monster. And somehow she still has kind of a sweet lesbian crush on her bestie.
About halfway through, the story takes a bizarre turn. Initially I thought the so-called "angels" were just called that because it sounds more original than "zombies." Well, we get a lot more background on what's going on. It's weird and surreal. The worldbuilding was a little rough at times, and the writing, while okay, was clearly the work of a new writer. This is the sort of book that you can only find in the indie market; it's an unpolished gem that sometimes seemed a little much, and often was a little confusing, but I kept reading.
I still think the LitRPG elements were basically unnecessary. Jenny and her opponents having stats and leveling up didn't really add anything to the story, and the healing potions just seemed like a clunky plot device since the heroine keeps getting maimed and would not otherwise make it to the end of the book.
There was also a completely unnecessary intermission chapter featuring Jenny's mother's POV, which I guess is meant to make her more of a real person and help us understand Jenny's upbringing, but it just seemed like a novice writer's indulgence, since it had no impact at all on the story.
The ending is gruesome and tragic and a cliffhanger because the author is apparently working on a trilogy.
Flaws notwithstanding, I enjoyed this book and am on board for the sequel.
My complete list of book reviews.
Podium Publishing, 2025, 426 pages
A high school student is thrust into a battle to the death with flesh-eating angels in the first installment of this heart-pounding LitRPG series.
Jenny Huang’s day starts out stressful enough. Between an argument with her overbearing mom and a surprise pop quiz in first-period English, she’s counting down the weeks until she can escape to college. To top it all off, she’s working up the nerve to ask her best-friend-slash-crush to prom.
But when an earthquake rips her high school into another realm, Jenny suddenly has much bigger problems to contend with. The Survival Challenge is in effect, trapping Jenny and her classmates in a hellish battle royale. There are 851 people stuck in the building, and that number is ticking down—fast. Hunted by murderous angels and guided by strange system notifications, there’s only one kill or be eaten.
By crafting weapons and mastering the mechanics of this nightmarish new world, Jenny levels up and fights to keep herself and her friends alive. But survival comes with a price. The stronger she grows, the more she uncovers of a dark, vengeful side of herself she doesn’t recognize. With every kill—with every bite—she loses more of the girl she used to be.
And one horrible truth keeps haunting the Challenge only ends when one person is left standing. How can Jenny protect the people she cares about if, in the end, she’ll just have to destroy them too?
Finally a Kindle Unlimited read that held me to the end. But if you don't like ultra-violence and body horror, this is not the book for you. If you do like ultra-violence and body horror, I think this was a good read despite, not because of, the LitRPG elements.
Most LitRPGs are so terrible I don't finish them. All His Angels Are Starving intrigued me because of the title, the cover, and a premise that seemed less derivative than 90% of LitRPGs. "Survival horror" set in a high school — at first I thought it would be a zombie apocalypse with stat blocks. It's not — it's something much more interesting, although at times it seemed like the author was sort of making things up as she went along.
The thing is, it really didn't need to be a LitRPG, and that was the realization I came to partway through. The LitRPG elements were unnecessary except as a gimmick to explain how the protagonist gets powers, and in the end it was everything else that made the novel interesting, while the LitRPG part really didn't make much sense. I can't help wondering if the author was actually inspired by LitRPGs, or really wanted to write a more traditional horror novel but thought making it a LitRPG would tap a larger audience.
Jenny Huang is a high school junior. She's got a difficult relationship with her mother, her stepfather, and her younger stepbrother. The book starts with Jenny being a fairly typical teenage girl, in other words.
Then a dimensional rift opens and her high school is sucked into a void. Monstrous undead-like creatures called "Tarnished Angels" appear and start slaughtering the students and teachers. They are called "Tarnished Angels" by a mysterious system that flashes text in everyone's heads, telling them they are now participating in the Survival Challenge.
Jenny manages to survive the first onslaught, and by luck and determination levels up more rapidly than everyone else. When she reunites with her still-alive best friend and stepbrother (both of whom have also kind of figured out the system and started leveling up), she's an armored death-dealer with a flying golden axe. Her best friend, Susan, has become a healer with a magic pink helmet. The librarian has lost an eye but become an amazon with a spear.
What pulled me in was not Jenny adding to her stats and acquiring power-ups like Savage Throw, but the fighting as she tries to reach Susan (who it turns out she has a crush on) and her stepbrother (whom she never really cared about before but suddenly realizes the meaning of family). Jenny's internal monologues are angsty, adolescent, and desperate in a realistic teen way. One of the things I found compelling about The Hunger Games was that Katniss Everdeen was realistically traumatized by what she went through. All His Angels Are Starving features teenage characters but unlike Hunger Games, it is not YA: imagine a blood-drenched, R-rated Hunger Games, with cannibalism.
This is a very gory novel. Humans and angels tear each other apart in vivid, spurting, guts-on-the-floor detail. Eventually Jenny realizes that she can become more powerful by eating her enemies (there is a lot of descriptive chewing, slurping, sucking, swallowing, and nom-noming), and by the end of the book she's become a tentacled, exoskeletoned Gigeresque monster. And somehow she still has kind of a sweet lesbian crush on her bestie.
About halfway through, the story takes a bizarre turn. Initially I thought the so-called "angels" were just called that because it sounds more original than "zombies." Well, we get a lot more background on what's going on. It's weird and surreal. The worldbuilding was a little rough at times, and the writing, while okay, was clearly the work of a new writer. This is the sort of book that you can only find in the indie market; it's an unpolished gem that sometimes seemed a little much, and often was a little confusing, but I kept reading.
I still think the LitRPG elements were basically unnecessary. Jenny and her opponents having stats and leveling up didn't really add anything to the story, and the healing potions just seemed like a clunky plot device since the heroine keeps getting maimed and would not otherwise make it to the end of the book.
There was also a completely unnecessary intermission chapter featuring Jenny's mother's POV, which I guess is meant to make her more of a real person and help us understand Jenny's upbringing, but it just seemed like a novice writer's indulgence, since it had no impact at all on the story.
The ending is gruesome and tragic and a cliffhanger because the author is apparently working on a trilogy.
Flaws notwithstanding, I enjoyed this book and am on board for the sequel.
My complete list of book reviews.
