If you feel like expanding I'd like to hear about what the book gets wrong about survival cannibalism. (I've not read the book, I'm just curious)
I read it a few months ago at this point and don't really remember the specifics anymore (aside from them being, you know, wrong), but the one that really sticks out is survival cannibalism not being like. a last option. -- there's a whole bit in there about how they won't eat the horses because, um, reasons? (I actually got the impression that the author had forgotten that a castle would have horses and had to add it in at the last minute. It was some very bizarre (not religious) reason that I can't remember now.) But they ate the dogs already, and that's...very much reversed of how it would normally go -- once you've eaten down things like sheep and cows and goats and chickens, then horses are next because, and this part is kind of important (but not mentioned), if horses are not eating grass, then they're eating grain. which humans can also eat, particularly if they're starving. also a horse is LARGE. a horse is quite a bit larger than a human. you will eat the horses before you eat the dogs, and you will eat the dogs (and cats and rats and pet birds and anything else) before you eat another human being.
also I am pretty sure the author did not think about the actual mechanics of how humans eat humans in survival situations. because! we know this. on an archaeology level, you can tell because of the cut marks on the bones if you're looking at human remains, which will also often be cracked for the marrow. (this came up quite recently with Tumblr's favorite historical survival cannibalism tragedy, the Franklin Expedition, and the identification of James FitzJames' remains) (they ate his face and we know this because of cut marks on the skull -- i.e. where a knife or other blade leaves marks behind on the bones during the defleshing process). historically speaking? survival cannibalism in premodern sieges comes up in written accounts of sieges. more recently historically speaking? survival cannibalism has happened pretty recently. (1972 Andes flight disaster is very well known, it's also happened in various 20th century famines -- there are pretty grim pictures on Wiki from the 1921-22 famine in the USSR.) (there may be more recent cases of survival cannibalism I don't know about, those are just the ones I know off the top of my head.) survival cannibalism occurs when there are literally no other options to survive because most cultures have a very strong taboo against eating other human beings. emphasis here on survival cannibalism, obviously cannibalism occurs in other settings in various cultures, and we're leaving serial killers out of the conversation here, that's basically unrelated.
I am not a historical cannibalism expert by any means because frankly it is TOO grim for me (and while I know a bit about premodern sieges that's not my area of expertise either); this just happened to be the sweet spot of "I know enough about this to be able to tell that you did not do the research." like, it was vibes-based cannibalism and both author and characters flip-flopped wildly between "survival cannibalism is the worst thing ever, it shouldn't be acceptable even in times of great duress" and "when you're desperate, you do what you need to do to survive, even eat the bodies of the dead." and it was the same characters flipping between these.
also, like, I need to emphasize that this was the survival cannibalism BEFORE the demon-induced non-sexual orgiastic cannibalism. the survival cannibalism happened BEFORE that. that one is whatever, that was the premise of the book, it's just the fact that the author ALSO wanted to include survival cannibalism, both committed by the characters in the past (fine when you do it to survive) and as a morally wrong act in the present.
I was just very baffled by this book. but I know a lot of people really liked it, it was just designed in a number of different ways to make me, specifically, insane. this book made me so insane in the bad way that I immediately recced it to someone else because I knew the stuff that made ME crazy was very likely to be exactly their jam. (and no one else would care about the survival cannibalism during premodern siege stuff.)
eta: just realized I never named the book anywhere in here: so for those that didn't see the tags on that earlier post, this is about The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
