All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It took me a while to make myself read All the Crooked Saints, but I am so glad that I did. It was absolutely wonderful and I can’t wait to share it with others.
Synopsis:
When I read the back cover of this book, I still felt like I had no idea what it was about. I understand now, because it’s a little hard to explain. Basically the story is about a very special family who is able to perform miracles on others. But this isn’t your typical miracle. What they do is show you your darkness inside so that you can overcome it. Through the process of this miracle, your darkness takes on some kind of physical form that does not leave you until you learn how to overcome it. For example: one person grows into a giant, one has a coyote head, one can only repeat back what others say. In this story, the Soria family faces a crisis in which they have too many pilgrims in Bicho Raro who are not able to overcome their own darkness. The only problem: if they help the pilgrims, their own darkness manifests, and Soria darkness can be deadly.
Review:
Maggie Stiefvater is a poet. In my mind her words sound like a flowing river. Sometimes it leads to a babbling brook (where you laugh), and sometimes a waterfall (where you cry), but most of the time it’s this steady stream of poetry that makes you slow down and think. Everything in her story, even the humorous bits, have meaning, you just have to fish for it. I also appreciated the way the story was planned out. She shares information about characters in a slow, overlapping reveal. You’ll read about some strange, humorous trait of a character, and then later it’s explained just as you learn a strange trait of another character that will be explained later. Maggie Stiefvator is a true master of words and character-driven plots.
I also very much appreciated the message shared. I don’t want to give anything away, but the lessons learned are very meaningful and applicable to everyone’s life. We all have darkness inside of us and eventually, it needs to be confronted in order to heal. So much of the story is symbolic. Enough of it, in fact, that I feel the need to read it a second, third, maybe fourth time in order to catch more of the symbolism. And yet, even without understanding all of the symbols, the characters and the plot are compelling enough on their own. I loved these characters and I was fully invested in their story from start to finish.
Overall, fabulous, amazing, and unique read. I highly recommend it!