The Starved God by Thomas Norford

Overall Rating: **** (4 stars)

The Starved God is a story of exploration and violent death, set in a world where humanity has diverged into multiple antagonistic species.

Our protagonist, Canna Dawn, is an amateur naturalist, living in the community of Riverbend. What we see of Canna and his people is both familiar and strange. They seem to be human, but it soon becomes clear that there are some odd elements to their biology and way of life. It also turns out that there are several different human species, all of them significantly different from each other, and none of them exactly like us. Riverbend and the kingdom around it seem to be at an early Nineteenth Century level of development, but they are oddly advanced in some ways and lagging in others. The world itself seems very Earthlike, but its geography is strange . . . and the planet is encircled by a prominent set of rings.

Soon, Canna is recruited for an expedition led by the sea-captain Skuld Heel. Captain Skuld has been commissioned to cross the ocean and explore lands at the very edge of human knowledge. He needs a naturalist to help him catalogue the plants and animals they find . . . and to evaluate the distant lands for colonization and exploitation. Canna isn’t eager to leave Riverbend, but he is soon forced to go. The things he learns along the way will have profound implications for him and his people.

The prose style here is quite clean, with very few copy-editing errors. Viewpoint discipline is decent; some passages are told from the perspective of different characters, but the result is clear and easy to follow. The reader will be pulled along by the desire to solve the mysteries posed by the narrative – is this story set on Earth? If it is, how did things get so strange? How will Canna and the other characters cope with the discoveries they make? The story kept me engaged from start to finish.

The world-building here is solid, the strangeness of the setting well-motivated and well-described. Some of its features were a trifle too derivative for my taste. For example, it won’t take too long for the reader to realize the exact Earthly-historical analogue for Canna’s adventure. (It doesn’t help that even Canna’s initials point directly to his real-world inspiration.) The world is grounded in ideas from evolutionary biology and cognitive science, but there aren’t a lot of surprises here.

Meanwhile, late in the story Mr. Norford succumbs to one of the terrible temptations that present themselves to any author engaged in rich world-building. For most of the narrative, he does a fine job of sticking to Canna’s viewpoint, allowing us to watch our hero unravel the world’s mysteries through observation and deduction. Then, close to the climax, the story abruptly drops out of “showing” mode and into a big chunk of exposition in “telling” mode. All the answers are dropped into our lap by a genuine deus ex machina. The overall sense is that of a high-concept, big-ideas, deep-world-building story that doesn’t quite stick the landing.

Still, this is a very well-crafted and intriguing story with lots of lovely scenery and clear sequel hooks. I enjoyed it, and I’m very interested to see what Mr. Norford works on next. Highly recommended.