obscurastrange's reviews
145 reviews

The Unworthy by Augustine Bazterrica, author of Tender is the Flesh, lands us in the walled compound of the House of the Sacred Sisterhood. A multi tiered religious cult at the end of the world. Set in a climate dystopia, we are thrown into the cult as we would be had we managed to scale its walls in the desolate land it inhabits. There are many different tiers to this cult, servants serve The Unworthy, who wish to one day ascend to the level of The Enlightened who serve under a Superior Sister and an obscured male character who acts as the cult’s figurehead. 

The Unworthy details the life of our main character who keeps a diary in secret, using the ink of old monks who once inhabited their compound, and anything else she can find. She details their day to day, their rituals, daily work, how they interact with one another, and the ways they punish each other. She also gathers control in any way she can, writing her secret journal, stealing small trinkets, playing tricks or punishment on the other Unworthy and gathering poisonous mushrooms. 

Everything changes for our main character when Lucia arrives, her differences threatening to shift the cult’s monotony. Our main character begins to explore and remember her time in the dystopia before she arrived at the cult, and we learn more about this world at the end of a climate disaster. How she had survived until now, and the differences between the outside world, and the inner cult. 

This book was really gripping, I liked how it landed us straight in the world, and it took some time to make sense of things. To make sense of the different cult roles, the dynamic, why they exist, and why they exist the way they do. I think this was a really useful technique to make us feel how the characters who suddenly discover or end up in the cult might feel. I would have loved a bit more detail on why the cult exists, what specifically it preaches, and how it came about. However, I do think what we were told (or not told) lent a lot to the mystery and unease around the cult. 

Pick this up if you like: cults, dystopia, lgbtqia+ characters, books with women, climate dystopia, religious cults, 

Thank you to NetGalley, the Author & Publisher for providing me with an ARC for this book in exchange for an honest review. 

This book was such fun to read, it’s a very unique concept, dark and peculiar but incredibly funny and a bit irreverent at times. The prose is delicious, the way the main character describes things, or the connections she makes are usually both bewildering and hilarious - a glorious pairing! 

This is a short book but it was incredibly fun and a joy to read, I found myself tearing through it and excited for each chapter. I love the voice of this character, and I think she was portrayed in a really interesting way. 

I am very glad to hear that this has been picked up to be adapted into a horror movie, I can’t wait for that!

The only reason this isn’t a 5 star read for me is that the crest of the story lacked a punch. I enjoyed it, and I wasn’t bored by the culmination of the story, but I wish it had gone that little bit further, left a final surprise or something really strange to shock us with at the end. 

It’s been nearly a week since I finished this book and I’m still not sure what I want to say about it. I can see why this book is so widely loved and highly recommended. The setting was described so beautifully and seemed so esoteric. I had anticipated the reveal but it didn’t feel tired. 

But more than anything this book left me pondering, which is a quality I really enjoy about a book. It has made me deliberate on the importance of recording your life and existence, and finding your purpose in life. On the differences between different versions of you at different times. 

I will definitely revisit this book for a reread, and I’m going to seek out some other’s thoughts, reviews, and analysis on this book!

I wish I’d found this book when I was first diagnosed. Although this book covers a huge range of topics, perhaps a little too many as I found the last few chapters to be a bit difficult to get through and too wide reaching and not specific enough. The majority of this book was a wonderful, informative, and reflective read. 

I really enjoy the way this book is structured, it’s very autism friendly with key points that will be discussed in each chapter. There is rarely heavy walls of text, and there is lots of reflective and personal descriptions throughout which helped me to put context to the text. Specifically the way in which the author talks about sensory issues, and plans to tackle them, while thinking about all the different types of sensory input was so incredibly useful. I’ve highlighted and book marked huge chunks of this book to come back to and create personal sensory/meltdown/shutdown/regulation plans from. 

I do think the author wanted to touch a lot of bases, and make sure everything that an autistic person or family member reading this could possibly experience. But I found her strongest work to be in the first half of this book when it was very reflective and had a lot of personal context. The last chapters in particular about Therapy and Mental Health were very wide reaching and didn’t hold the same spark that the first half of the book had. 

However, I really enjoyed this book, and found the great majority of it extremely useful and reflective. I wish I’d found this book when I was first diagnosed as the information and methods to deal with sensory experiences, overwhelm, shutdowns, and the like were incredibly useful!