The Luminous Dead

CW: parental death, death, parental abandonment, claustrophobia and some violence

This was a hell of a ride. I really enjoyed this book out of my comfort zone! I liked the fact that we are getting queer stories that are dark.

Gyre is set on not staying on her planet anymore. With a plan in hand to get her ticket out she ends up signing what may her very last contract. Her expectations did not align with her reality. Instead of having a team surveying her moves and keeping her safe she just has Em. Em who has secrets of her own. Em being her only connection to the topside.

This made me so anxious and I sped through the last quarter of this book demanding answers. At first I wondered if this needed to be done as sci-fi and there are certain parts that really rely on it such as the suits and tunnelers.

I don't know if there are any other souls out there that want to read spoilers before they finish or even pick up a book but they are all in here. It's long.
Gyre wants to get off planet to find her mother. Gyre makes some pretty gruesome discoveries about the divers before her. She learns that there have been 27 dead divers before her. She considers turning back at one of the early camps but Em persuades her to continue by doing whatever she wanted. Gyre wanted her to find her mother. As Gyre gets deeper into the caves we learn that Em is in charge of a mining empire and the only one topside monitoring her. One of the bigger reveals is that Em's parents went down into the depths of the caves but only her mother returned. The rest of the team did not survive including her father. Every time Gyre considers turning back there is a point in which Em can convince her to continue on. As included in the synopsis Em sometimes goes wild and plays god by injecting drugs into Gyre to either stop her or force her to sleep. She also has the ability to control her suit which she does take advantage of. As Gyre goes deeper into the cave she starts to see things and she begins to deteriorate. Not knowing if the cave is actually haunted or if she is just beginning to go crazy she has to rely on Em although that also comes with a price. Em shares videos of her parents dive as an attempt to humanize herself and her reasoning for sending others to their deaths. We see her Mother being interviewed as she was the only survivor. Em's mother abandons her and vanishes. It eventually is revealed that Em has sent the divers down to try and find her mother, thinking that that was where she was. As Gyre goes deeper into the caves she sees Em's mother and others lost to the cave. She doesn't share that with Em because she does not want her to inject her with drugs. There is a point where Gyre has lost communication from Em, her battery dying, and no back up food and it is stressful as hell. Eventually Gyre finds a chamber which held some of the dead that were never found before. She offers to bring them topside but Em tells her that she doesn't have to. Instead they have a ceremony in the cave and Em is able to grieve. Gyre is not stable anymore. She ends up getting hurt on her trek up to solid ground. At one point in her madness she opens the files that Em provided to her about her mother. What she found out was that her lapse in her life was becoming pregnant with Gyre on a planet that she was studying and she returned back to her "normal" life. She has a new husband and children. While Gyre is injured Em urges Gyre to make it to the second camp and she would come down herself to get her. Gyre hears the call of the dead, urging her to go deeper and join them, and she considers it. We see that Em rescues Gyre and is doing an exit interview similar to what Em's mother did. Gyre has come back a fragment of herself. Em lets her know that she will get her a ticket to go anywhere. Gyre asks that she comes with her to face her own mother.

3.25 out of 5 stars

When Gyre Price is recruited to survey a dangerous cave system on a far off planet, her only chance of survival is to trust an enigmatic overseer and her own wits, which are slowly diminishing the deeper she journeys into the abyss.

Author Caitlin Starling creates a palpable sense of dread and foreboding as the book progresses. The cave itself is so claustrophobic and unsettling that by the end I was very ready to rid myself of such a sinister setting.

The story itself never really unfolded in the way I wanted it to, though. I was hoping for and expecting more hair-raising horror and thrills, but the book leans more heavily into psychological trauma, which it does communicate in an effective way. The book itself is well-written and engaging, and while the ultimate endgame did not leave me satisfied, I was captivated enough to go along for the ride.

My thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf

caves are just incredibly spooky to me, so i already knew that the setting would work for me in a horror novel.

honestly, theres not a lot that i would criticize about this novel, i liked the plot itself, i enjoyed the dynamic between the two characters and the writing style felt very alive.

i do think that the story suffered a bit frol the length of the novel though; this could have easily been way shorter and nothing would have been missing. it wasnt ideal that i went from being on the edge of my seat to “okay can she just get out of the cave now please, im starting to get bored :')”

the last 10% were really strong though and i loved the ending!