Caitlin Starling, "The Luminous Dead" (Harper Voyager, 2019)

New Books in Literature · May 16, 2019 · 38m

Caitlin Starling’s debut The Luminous Dead (Harper Voyager, 2019) takes readers along with her young protagonist, Gyre Price, to a place few would voluntarily go—into a deep, pitch-dark cave inhabited by avalanche-inducing, rock-eating worms from which only one human being (among many) has emerged alive. Still, Gyre thinks the risk of scouting for minerals is worth it. Not only does the job pay extraordinarily well, but she’s wearing a state-of-the-art suit, which protects her from the cave’s potentially lethal environment. Normally, there’s a whole team of experts guiding cavers like Gyre…