“It’s trash, frankly.” So said the seasoned professor of German literature at the first Zoom meeting of the Catholic reading group I facilitated.
She wasn’t the only one, either. Others were nicer about it, but it was clear that even the most open-minded of those who had assembled were being open-minded about a book they thought was pretty bad.
This was our first meeting as part of Loyola University Chicago’s Reading the Catholic Imagination seminar, which would last us six weeks over the summer of 2023. For my unit, I’d chosen a dark fantasy novel called Skullsworn by award-winning author Brian Staveley. Skullsworn follows the story of a woman named Pyrre, an acolyte of Ananshael, the god of death in Staveley’s secondary world. To become a full priestess of Ananshael—a Skullsworn—Pyrre must murder seven people in 14 days, each under very specific conditions. If she doesn’t, her own life will be forfeit.
