*TUDOR^QUEEN* 's Reviews > Sin Eater

3.5 rounded up to 4 Stars

This book came on my radar via a NetGalley email inviting me to read the book. Otherwise, I think I would have overlooked this. I just found the email. It spoke of a "topsy turvy version of Elizabethan England with characters reminiscent of Queen Elizabeth I, Robert Dudley, Mary Seymour and others." Now that I am re-reading this email, it helps answer some of my mild confusion while reading this book. I am a British monarchy buff, so initially I was wondering who Queen Bethany and Queen Maris were. I kind of figured out that they meant Tudor queens (and half-sisters) Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Mary, but thought perhaps the main character Meg Owens spoke a different dialect of English.

For some reason I had been putting off reading this book, but looking for something different I finally picked it up and was surprised to find myself seriously drawn in. I connected with the sadness and extreme loneliness of Meg Owens. She's all alone in her house, parents both deceased at the age of 14. She gets thrown in jail for stealing a loaf of bread. Instead of receiving a death sentence, she's branded a Sin Eater. A heavy link chain with an "S" pendant gets locked around her neck by the court recorder, and her tongue gets tattooed with an "S". In shock and confusion she gets let out onto the street where passerby give her a wide berth, recognizing the trappings of a Sin Eater. If she gets too close people bless themselves for protection or might even be compelled to throw stones at her. She doesn't know where to go. When she attempts to go back to her abandoned home, the neighbors make it clear she's not wanted. The branding of a Sin Eater is all that it takes to get shunned. By following the smell of dung that signifies the wrong side of town, she stumbles upon the cottage of the elder Sin Eater.

What is a Sin Eater? When someone is going to die, the Sin Eater gets summoned by a messenger. Under normal conditions, the Sin Eater never speaks, but only at the ritual of hearing someone's sins. The person that is dying counts off each sin, which is matched by a kind of food. Those particular food items are brought to the Sin Eater to eat, which signifies the taking on of those sins so that the deceased is cleansed of sin. If the person dies before the Sin Eater can hear the confession, there is a standard array of food to be consumed by the Sin Eater. Meg follows her elder Sin Eater around on foot and learns the ropes. At first she is exhausted from malnutrition. However, one of the few benefits of this "job" is that she will never go hungry, and soon she is getting extra skin on those bones.

I was enraptured with this story, ironically enough, until a Sin Eating job came up at the castle. It was here that Meg encountered The Queen and a rather unsavory cast of characters with strange nicknames such as The Painted Pig, Willow Tree, Mush Face, Fair Hair, and Black Fingers. In the parallel universe of The Tudor court, you can match up easily at least one of these to the true historical figure, but I found these names quite confusing to follow. They are names Meg came up with to easily identify these court members. Unfortunately, these names persisted to the end of the book and only caused a disconnect for me. There was also a pivotal event where a deer's heart was left on top of a coffin in the castle, which led to a mystery to unravel. This mystery was way too dragged out for me, and involved all these court members I just mentioned.

In summation, I truly enjoyed the simplicity and inner strength of Meg's character, but felt like the story went a bit too far off the rails during the court intrigue part of the tale. At the beginning of the story I felt like I was on my way to a 5 Star read, but felt a bit detatched towards the end.

Thank you to the publisher Atria Books who provided an advance reader copy via NetGalley.