A Disappointing Book From a Favorite Author, aka All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater

All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater
★★★☆☆

We almost always can point to that hundredth blow, but we don’t always mark the ninety-nine other things that happen before we change.

In a small town in 1960s Colorado, a latinx family of saints performs miracles on pilgrims. But a Soria miracle can only be triggered; the second step of the miracle comes when the pilgrim learns to acknowledge their inner darkness and learn from it.

Maggie Stiefvater has a brand. If I were to define that brand, it would be in three things: 1) weird magical vibes and strange animal imagery, 2) small rural towns, 3) large casts of interesting side characters, 4) emotionally unavailable female leads. The main problem with this book is that it has all of her tropes, all of her best writing and imagery and some pretty decent character development, but it feels as if it lacks the emotion behind them just a little bit.

➽So… I generally think Maggie Stiefvater is absolutely great at crafting dynamic casts of side characters, and I think this trend really comes out here. I was a huge fan of the dynamics of the Soira family, but I especially adored the three Soria cousins:
✔Beatriz – token emotionally unavailable female lead. Okay, no, Stiefvater keeps repeating this narrative, but it’s a really interesting narrative. Beatriz is a character struggling with acknowledging her own feelings; she is a scientist, and a talented one, but she refuses to let herself be anything else. Really liked her.
✔Joaquin – an aspiring radio DJ on a pirated radio. Edgy boi who I would die for. Very amusing but also ambitious and would die for his family. I’m so proud of him.
✔Daniel – the Saint and miracle-worker. An extremely caring and sweet character and I absolutely adored him and I love him.

➽And besides the Sorias, there is a fantastic, compelling cast of side characters: the pilgrims. From a preacher with the head of a wolf to a woman who can do nothing but repeat the words of others, they are all here to cleanse themselves of their inner darkness, whether they know what it is or not.
✔Pete – meh. I’m sorry, but of every side character in this book, I found him to be the absolute blandest.
✔Tony – a former radio DJ on the run from fame and in search of a miracle. Fairly amusing.
✔Marisita – Absolutely my favorite character in the whole damn book. Arc around self hatred and so much gorgeous imagery; she is covered with butterflies and tears as a result of her first miracle.

I did really like all these characters. Marisita and Daniel’s romance was just freaking adorable, and the three Soria cousins have a really sweet bond. But it wasn’t enough. I guess I just didn’t really connect to any of the characters very much? They’re fine, but not amazing.

I also… struggled with the thematic cores. okay, I really liked the message around generational trauma, and of course books can have the same message as each other. But I honestly kept internally comparing this to books like Wild Beauty and finding it… lacking.

the drama about this was actually a bit weird? For those of you unfamiliar, it occured before arcs were even released, and apparently we all just assumed it was bad because… Stiefvater wrote it? There were two lantinx sensitivity readers working on this book, and the early-on twitter claim that Stiefvater didn’t do research on latina people in the 1960s is untrue [as it was written before arc copies were even released].

However, I sort of have to second what Giselle said here. It’s not blatantly awful representation, but it is… flawed. Now, don’t get me wrong, the narrative in which an emotionally cold girl learns to love is a Stiefvater cliche [literally, an emotionally cold girl is the protagonist of both series I have read by her] and my guess is she just literally didn’t consider the implications. There is also another latina girl who narrates and does not fit this cliche at all. But a major stereotype about latina girls is that they are unemotional. Beatriz does not fit the loud stereotype, nor is she oversexualized. But as the lead latina girl protagonist, her being completely unemotional… does feel weird. It feels perhaps weirder because she’s learning to love via the blandest white boy in the world.

If you’d like to learn more, here is a post about magical realism and appropriation. And since someone is inevitably going to ask me what I’m recommending for a book that does it better, this is just a friendly reminder to read Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore.

There definitely are better aspects. The imagery is really great. Um, I absolutely adored the thing she wanted / thing she feared character intros. The audiobook fucking rocks; the narrator is latino, and did a fantastic job of character voices. And in general, there’s a very magical vibe to this book, almost otherworldly but grounded by characters we relate to. I loved the wide scope of the Soria family and how positive and loving their dynamic was. Yet they still feel like a flawed, dynamic family. The trio of Soria cousins are great. There are a lot of great ideas. I do really love how Stiefvater plays with language and metaphor; it’s a lot of fun, and I’m sure you could annotate her language play till the end of time.

But overall, I just found this to be… okay. I definitely preferred The Scorpio Races and The Raven Cycle to this.

Have you read All the Crooked Saints? Any of Stiefvater’s other work? Are you interested? Let me know in the comments!Blog | Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube