Just Another Final Girl Review (Brittany) Levely-Connolly’s Reviews > Hungers as Old as This Land > Status Update

Note closest city - named independence

“Miners were cattle, beasts of burden. When you had one that proved itself obstinate and dragged others down with it, you didn’t waste time negotiating. You thinned the herd and moved.”
Corporate values, need and desire more important than the people

Bancroft & Hughes Mining and Railroad Conglomerate
owner Gerard Bancroft
“permanent solution when he’d hired the “Blackhawks.

Exchange of meat for gold done by town of gray bluffs in exchange for their ability to live there safely”

“it safely home to Grey’s Bluffs. Her father had been insistent this was not negotiable.”
Deal between her dad and beings

“For all her confidence before, there was no such thing as a man or woman in Grey’s Bluffs who could approach the Hungers without trepidation.”

Why???
Also note they are being followed by shadows

Chapter two:

Esther brought her mouth up and eagerly stole another kiss like it was the greatest of treasures. “Shalom yourself. Fine, I’m alright. Ya can kiss me all ya like when we’re clear of the Hungers.” Now she did see movement against a mountainside. Something large and swift vanishing along one peak.
Theme
Importance of community
LGBTQIA relationships accepted by father
Foreshadow monstrous other

“Cyril intended to live, to flourish. Those were the only things that mattered to him now; what he hungered for. Concealed behind a shield of stampeding, uniformed bodies, Cyril committed himself to the final charge, roaring as a lion so he might sell the image just a little bit better.”

Theme of:
greed
What men will do for money
Money as motivation
Money over lives of others

“Cyril believed in the payment promised on his enlistment contract. Dead men couldn’t spend dollars.”

Feel like he represents hegemonic patriarchal capitalist society
Where men are valued by ability to provide for family and the wages they earn. Profit over people mentality
Us vs them
Idea that sell time for service

Reminiscent of lone women by Victor LaValle
A lot of similarities
Both:
Strong female protagonists
Othered by race and sexuality
Both feature committed lesbian relationships in a healthy way
Feminist texts
Western
Historical fiction
Colonization
Social and cultural criticism implied throughout text
Monstrous others
Racial Injustice
Capitalism over humanity even friends
Money worth more than a life

“All around them, the blood and brains of men too impatient and too foolish to know how to survive mingled with the wet earth.”

““What’re you so scared of? They can only kill us once.”
Opens with battle in USA in 1862
Genre
LGBTQIA
Horror
Historical fiction
Gen adult fiction
Western
Crime
Fantasy