The Devourers

This is a tough one to review. There's so much here to love--the language, the world-building, the characters--and at the same time, I'm finding it hard to pull together my final feelings. The pacing was, for me, the big difficulty. There were passages and chapters where I couldn't stop turning pages, and was absolutely in love with this book. But there were also whole passages and chapters--some long--where I was simply reading to read, having trouble engaging with the story and words on any level, as if all inertia had been sucked out of the read.

Someone in my book group suggested that they were looking at the book as being about story-telling, which I think makes the most sense to me. Thinking about it like that, and especially when show more I focus on the best moments and the writing itself, I find myself a little bit in love with the book. Especially when I extend that theme to thinking about memory-making (purposefully) and the purposeful building of identity, there's a lot to think about here, and a lot to admire. show less

** contains spoilers **
I've had this one on my want to read list for a long time, so I no longer remember how it came to my attention, but oh, it was so worth reading. One of my big complaints about traditionally published books that mention werewolves is how formulaic and unimaginative they are, but that is so not relevant here.

Das has woven together a range of different myths about shapeshifters with some amazing world building, and created something unique. Multiple stories interleave, but each is crisply separate, allowing one to appreciate each character individually.

The story is not for the faint of heart though. The eponymous Devourers are exactly that - eaters not just of people's bodies, but their spirits as well. There is show more significant explicit violence, including a rape scene. The later is done sparsely, and is entirely relevant to the story - but there is nothing comfortable about it - no tittilation for the reader.

And there are other aspects that appealed strongly. The details of the Kolkata setting, the explicitly bisexual viewpoint character in the framing story. The language use is rich, poetic at times, and the scenes with drug use manage a dreamy not quite real sensation that is amazingly evocative. There is no judgement about what I assume is historically accurate drug use using modern (Western?) attitudes, which is refreshing. Similarly about prostitution - there is a recognition of this as being a reality for one of the characters, and doesn't moralise or measure her character from this show less

Most books that claim to defy genres are an amalgam of recognizable tropes. The Devourers, however, really is a different animal and the process of discovering it was a pleasure. In a nutshell, a professor in Kolkata is given privileged access to the memories of a violent shape-shifting race. What follows is part-ethnography, part revenge story, and part tragedy. It's also a circumspect story about finding affection amid isolation (I hope to see it on the ballot for a Lambda award). A quirk of the author is that the fleshy mortality of the characters is illustrated with fluids: urine and vomit, but especially blood, which is spilled and splashed across many chapters, though scenes of combat are rare. In the context of the story, show more however, it's illustrative rather than excessive. The writing was occasionally uneven, but the journey was uniquely enjoyable, and the ending was surprisingly satisfying. The Devourers is not likely to appeal to a wide audience, but some adventurous readers will appreciate it deeply.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance copy. show less

I can't honestly say that it is a completely unique experience to say that I've been consumed by a story, but I can honestly say that I've never consumed and been consumed by one in equal proportions.

This one hit me in the feels, and I can't quite say that I've ever really been taken in by the whole werewolf phenomenon, and although I have enjoyed the whole idea of burning life and and desperate death struggles, no particular novelization or film has quite done for me what this novel accomplished to do.

What has this novel done, you ask?

Imagine, for just a moment, that you're sitting down at your favorite coffee bar, exhausted and still half-asleep, perhaps after a very long night of listening to some raucous music and feeling lonely, show more when your coffee is placed in front of you, and you taste it, only to find that it is piping hot blood, and not coffee at all. Shocked and also unsurprised at the same time, you don't spit it out, instead, you savour the rich and heavy taste, amazed at the memories the scent conjures, and equally thrilled to learn that far from being some old blood, it's fresh, and oddly enough, you can even taste the beat of the racing heart within your cup. You drink deeply, and the cup continually refills itself, as heady as cream, as sweet as death, but absolutely overflowing with all the little details of life flashing before your eyes, or perhaps it is just the last moments of your victim as you drain his or her stories from the cup of his being, consuming not only his life, but his language, his custom, his soul, his very anima, and you make it your own. Far from being upset from this seemingly slow transformation from your first self to your second self, you see nothing wrong at all. It is the most natural thing in the world to devour the story, and even as you startle from your drifting memories of anguish, you pick a piece of flesh, perhaps the sinew of gut, from between your teeth, and you look up to see the glowing green lanterns of the eyes of your new companion who offers you your own death in kind, and you find, to your surprise, that you are still more curious than afraid, discovering that you would rather know than go without even this, perhaps the last of all the stories you will ever consume.


Do you understand? It's this feeling.

It also doesn't hurt at all that I was enraptured by the setting, living in Kolkata, India, in both modern and a time several hundred years ago, both, as a consumer of stories and a consumer of the past and the almost consumed of the present. I never once felt out of danger as a reader, and it was entirely the fault of the language that the author used. More than anything, this stream of words and evocative detail made the novel one of the richest, densest, and most revelatory of horror/fantasy novels I've ever read. It doesn't rely on plot, although the echoes of other plots haunt me even now, oh Durga fighting the Demon, oh Fenrir and his "love", oh Cyrah.

And don't misunderstand me on one fact: this is *not* a werewolf story. This is a story of all the nameless demons that refuse to be pinned down in the world. This is also about rakashas, devi, djinn, gods and goddessess, Banbibi, Bandurga, Bandevi. It's about Imakhr and Valkyrie, too.

And also, don't let me discourage you, because this is also a very simple tale. The difference is that it is told very deeply. :) I'm frankly in awe.

And I'm riding the high within a wave of blood.

Thanks goes to Netgalley for the delight of reading this beautiful book. show less

This is not the twee werewolf Twilight style novel, this is visceral, not shying away from the reality of shape-shifting creatures who eat humans. Hunter and prey.

Alok is a history professor who meets a stranger.
"My part in this story began the winter before winters started getting warmer, on a full-moon night so bright you could see your own shadow on an unlit rooftop. It was under that moon—slightly smudged by December mist clinging to the streets of Kolkata—that I met a man who told me he was half werewolf. He said this to me as if it were no different from being half Bengali, half Punjabi, half Parsi. Half werewolf under a full moon. Not the most subtle kind of irony, but a necessary one, if I’m to value the veracity of my show more recollections."

Intrigued and not wishing to appear unsophisticated he listens to the strangers story; and so begins a most bizarre and yet believable story about shape-shifters. Alok is given a handwritten journal, translated from the original, to transcribe into a typed manuscript. From the journals we travel back to a time before India is overturned by the Dutch East India co.

Setting the story in India gives the story another layer as India shape-shifts into the country we know now, the character also change and shift. Covering themes concerning obsession, love, belonging, identity and loyalty; this is much more than a story about werewolfs. Not one for the squeamish or prissy reader. show less

It is a fantasy novel set in India... needless to say, I loved reading about shape shifters looking at the Taj Mahal being constructed and prowling amongst us mortals in the streets of Mughal time Agra and Delhi, and present day Kolkata. In it's essence, this novel is about identity and how we, sometimes, have to hide our true self, our true nature. It starts with a 'man' claiming to be a half-werewolf telling a story about a werewolf and his 'love' for a mortal woman, more importantly the werewolf's desire to create a progeny, and how that story intermingles with the half-werewolf's own story (pretty confusing right? I thought so too!). Truth be told, initially, it took me some time to get into it because of the meandering nature of show more the story but once, I did get into it, it was weirdly engrossing. The narrator of these stories connects with the protagonist Alok because like him, Alok is also hiding his true self from the society which is only revealed in the end. What surprised me was how this novel focuses more prominently, than some others, on the true animalistic nature of these shape shifters... on their raw physicality on their unbridled inhumanity. Beware, there are many scatological descriptions, reading about which is sometimes gross, sometimes weird but much-required... nevertheless, consider yourselves warned! However, I loved reading how the author describes but not yet describes these shape-shifters. Another good thing about the novel is that it treats rape as it should be treated like a horrendous and unforgivable act. On second thoughts, I would have loved to read more about Cyrah, the only woman in the novel with a voice. It mixes myths and fantasy with reality which really fascinated me. In the end, the novel talks about love (in all forms) and companionship, about loneliness, about the need to be remembered, about storytelling, about the desire to belong, about our true self that we keep hidden, and about secrets... A wonderful read, indeed. show less

If I said, “werewolf,” would you roll your eyes? Then you’d be sorry, because you’d miss out on this book. A history professor is approached by a mysterious stranger, who confesses to being half shapeshifter and begins to weave an amazing tale of 17th century India and werewolves. And that is just the beginning! There are caravans and strange, magical beasts, quests for vengeance, the Taj Mahal and cannibalism, identity and love, and queer representation! Beautifully told, darkly fantastic, meandering, sometimes visceral, sometimes frightening. I can’t tell you any more because it’s the kind of book you need to experience for yourself