Kate’s Review: “The Unworthy”

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Book: “The Unworthy” by Agustina Bazterrica & Sarah Moses (Translator)

Publishing Info: Scribner, March 2025

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

Even though it was making the rounds when it came about a couple years ago, I never got around to reading “Tender Is The Flesh” by Agustina Bazterrica, a dystopian horror novel about a future where cannibalism is made legal and humans are bred for meat after the animals used for food are taken out by a virus. I heard that it was bleak and relentless, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to read it even though the metaphors sounded really interesting. But when I saw that she had a new horror novel out called “The Unworthy”, I decided to snap that one right up so that I could finally experience one of Bazterrica’s works. I thought that I prepared myself well, mentally, as hey, climate crisis and violent religious orders in horror? It’s not like those things deeply, deeply disturb me or anything, right?

This was my first time with a Bazterrica story and WOW. It was a ROUGH one, but not in a bad way. She takes on two horror sub-genres that stress me the hell out, eco/climate horror and religious horror, and combines them into a searing post-apocalyptic nightmare involving violence, chaos, zealotry, and, yes, feminine rage. Bazterrica doesn’t hold back from some really relentless and absolutely horrifying moments. There are so many content warnings I’d attach to this, between graphic depictions of violence to child death to mutilations and sexual violence, it’s fairly grim in the portrayal of a world devastated by climate change and a society that has basically collapsed, and the sociopaths that find ways to take advantage. Our nameless Narrator has been THROUGH it, and we see her story starting in the oppressive and zealous and violent convent, and eventually see how she got there as she writes out her story and comes to terms with everything that has happened to her. We also get hints into the corrupt and violent cult that she has found herself within, with her being a part of the ‘Unworthy’ class, who are submitted to hard labor, humiliation, and torture by the Superior Sister and the mysterious Him (a very creepy amped up take on carrying water for the patriarchy if I ever saw one). There are the Enlightened class that she hopes to join, though no one REALLY knows what that entails, just that it’s aspirational (though if you are like me and have a working knowledge of cults and tropes like this, you can guess that there are hidden, uh, costs). I loved the slow burn build up and how it was interspersed with not only Narrator’s past.

And then there were the genuinely beautiful things I found within this book, something I hadn’t expected as much when I picked it up given the plot and Bazterrica’s reputation. The first is just that the descriptions of things were gorgeous, and while this could be in part due to the translation by Sarah Moses, I get the sense that Bazterrica’s original text probably had this as well to show beauty within despairing. There was also the lovely connection between Narrator and newcomer Lucia, as Narrator hasn’t had a REAL connection since multiple losses she endured as the world as she knew it came crashing down. It’s also another great example of how high control groups and cults like the Sacred Sisterhood thrive on mistrust, paranoia, and the splintering of connections, and promising that only the group and its leadership can provide that, when it actuality community and connection to others is what can really bring people through the despairing and miserable times. And how community and connection is a threat. So many things I’ve been thinking about as of late just laying out on the pages here, in all it’s terrible and messy and scrappy hopeful glory.

“The Unworthy” is really, really tough, and has a lot of despair and misery. But it also has beauty, and showcases humanity in all of its highest highs and lowest lows. I quite enjoyed it, even if it made me feel really, really bad at times.

Rating 8: Relentless, horrifying, and at times rather gorgeous, “The Unworthy” is apocalyptic religious horror with an undercurrent of feminist rage.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Unworthy” is included on the Goodreads list “Dystopian Womanhood”.