By Hana Zittel The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica, Translated by Sarah Moses (2025) The world has ended and a remaining enclave of women, the Sacred Sisterhood, maintains a fierce hierarchical convent requiring ritual bloodletting, sacrifice, and self-harm to appease a god that determines their rank and worthiness. Enforced by the Superior Sister, the unworthy class rest at a rank just above the servants and aspire to become one of the Enlightened. Writing as an unnamed narrator, one of the unworthy uses anything she can find to tell her story: blood, charcoal and found ink. Existing in a culture of punishment, the women punish each other and relish watching the others atone for any sin through brutal, creative harm often dictated by the Superior Sister. Kept secluded from the outside world, they reject male, child or elderly wanderers, leaving them to die or, as the women suspect, be murdered by the Superior Sister. When the narrator discovers a young woman wanderer inside their walls, she provides careful instructions so she will be accepted into the Sisterhood. She tells her to hide and then pretend to faint in the garden to be discovered by a servant. This act of salvation leads to an intense bond between the narrator and this mysterious stranger, who seems to have otherworldly powers that alter the rigid social constructs of the Sacred Sisterhood. As their mutual trust is solidified, this relationship spurs the narrator to question her brutal present and write down her memories, remembering the world and the possibility of love in a time before the convent. The Unworthy is the second novel and third book from Agustina Bazterrica translated to English and follows up her grotesque horror novel, Tender is the Flesh. Displaying Bazterrica’s limitless creativity as a horror writer, this book is a realistic, fresh climate apocalypse tale centering on women. Initially ruthlessly gruesome, The Unworthy’s jarring twists make for a genre-melding novel, with tiny glimmers of hope lighting up a world marked in misery. The Unworthy was a finalist for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association. Shadows of the Sea by Cathy Malkasian (2025) Cartoonist Cathy Malkasian, whose work includes The Rugrats, The Wild Thornberrys, and previous graphic novels, returns with her newest book, Shadows of the Sea, which centers on an unlikely pair that meet after a run-in with a group of bandits. Doris is attacked by three men trying to steal her medals for being the fastest fish gutter. A quiet dog, recently let go from his position as a landmine sniffer, looks on and decides to intervene. He crushes their wagon while Doris slices one with her gutting knife, giving them time to get away. The two begin to look for food when Doris requests he sniff something out for them and they start to wander the countryside. Doris talks on and on, injecting stories of home, the sea and her husband while the dog stays silent. Eventually they find an eerily abandoned town that leads them to the sea, where they must face their individual pasts to move forward. Shadows of the Sea is a sweet, poignant tale of trauma and grief told through two memorable, fantastical characters. No. 147
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