The Book Eaters

Pros: brilliant world-building, interesting characters, fast paced

Cons:

Raised as a princess in one of the 6 remaining book eater houses in England, Devon Fairweather learns at her first marriage, that being pampered is not the same as being free. Now, she’s trying to escape the families along with her mind eater son.

The book alternates between scenes in the present with Devon on the run and scenes from the past that explain how she got to this point. The pacing is great and there is a mix of highly tense moments an downtime where you really get to know the main characters.

The world-building here is great. The book eaters are unique, and the mind eaters terrifying. The author does a great job of blending their curious and often show more antiquated style of living, with the modern day world. I also loved how she worked in knights and dragons.

Devon is a complicated woman. She loves her son, enough to get him humans to feed on, while also being scared of that need to feed. In some ways she’s suffered greatly, in others she’s still weirdly naive. I didn’t quite agree with some of her principles, but despite her crimes she still comes off as sympathetic and you still want to see her succeed.

It’s a strange book, telling about a strange people, and is wildly entertaining if you like darker urban fantasy. show less

Devon is a Book Eater, a separate species of human which eats books instead of food, who is on the run with her young son Cai, a rare type of Book Eater who eats human minds instead of books. She’s searching for a secretive family of Book Eaters who have invented a medication that will allow Cai to live without eating minds, while also evading her own family who want to take Cai away from her. Through their backstory we learn about the Book Eaters’ strange society, how Devon got to this point, and why she longs to break free.

A great read! Really interesting world-building and good characters. The Book Eaters have very cult-y vibes - they live in remote enclaves hidden around England and the rarity of their species gives the show more patriarchs complete control over their families (especially child-bearing women). Devon is an intriguing character - she's very pragmatic because, as she and we are told, Book Eaters are incapable of creative thinking. But is that really true if she can imagine a better life for her son? Many parts of this story are very dark - victims can't survive for long after Cai eats their minds, but Devon is not willing to let him suffer and die so she has no choice but to find victims for him. However, Devon finds kinship with others who have suffered under the strict society Book Eaters society, so not all is hopeless.
I very much enjoyed the writing style and I can't wait to read what the author writes next, whether it's in this world or another. show less

Scattered around the world are small, isolated communities of book eaters, who take nourishment from books instead of food. They also absorb the information of every book they eat, with nearly perfect recall.

In Britain, the book eaters are the Six Families, each living in a large family manor. With so small a community, marriages are carefully planned and arranged to maintain genetic diversity as much as possible; in order to keep the women docile and obedient about these arranged marriages, girls are raised on a limited diet of fairy tales and damsels in distress.

From childhood, Devon has been sneaking into her uncle's library and eating books she shouldn't, which has made her an unusually rebellious young woman, unwilling to follow show more the usual protocols and abandon her children when she is moved into a new marriage/breeding opportunity. When her son, Cai, is born with a rare mutation that makes him a potential danger to other book eaters, she is determined to rescue him from the restrictions of life among the other "dragons" and give them both an independent life away from the Families.

Very entertaining blend of fantasy (*) and thriller. The world of the book eaters has been smartly thought out, with interesting details that never feel like mere "oh, wouldn't this complicate things nicely!" contrivances. Devon and Cai are well rounded characters, and the supporting players are crisply and quickly drawn, given enough depth to feel like more than pieces to be moved around the gameboard.

(* -- One could quibble about whether the book eaters are fantasy creatures or SF creatures. The Families' own understanding of how they came to be on earth is that they were placed here by aliens, which I suppose would technically make this SF, but there's a lot of ambiguity about that explanation. It falls somewhere in the realm of myth or legend for the Families, who are for reasons that Dean explains not given to keeping accurate historical records. Whatever genre you choose to slot the book into, the story works.)

There is perhaps one "but you didn't know that I was really working for..." reversal too many in the final chapters, but aside from that, the thrills work, the villains are thoroughly hissable, and Dean does a fine job of building suspense.

I went into this book with modest expectations. I'm not a big fantasy reader, and what I knew of the premise sounded like something that could easily get too twee for my tastes. So this was a delightful surprise, and I look forward to seeing what Dean does next. show less

*Free e-book ARC received from the publisher through Edelweiss Plus - thank you!*

How far would you go for the people you love? That's what Devon has to decide when her son, Cai, is born not a book eater like she is, but a mind eater. Her people call them "dragons," and they feed leaving humans, if alive at all, a shell of themselves with no memories or real mind left at all when left to their own devices. On the run from her Family, Devon needs to get the drug Redemption for Cai, which will allow him to eat books like her, but the Family who makes it has disappeared and doesn't want to be found.

The narrative stays with Devon's point of view, and we go back and forth between the present, with Devon and Cai on the run over the course of show more just a few days, and the backstory of exactly how we got here, starting with Devon's childhood of eating fairy tales and being raised to marry and produce more book eaters. I really enjoyed immersing myself in Devon's world and wrestling with her morals and choices. It's grim and Gothic and very good. show less

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean is a weird story, but I loved it! A woman fighting against a patriarchal society, a secret society of supernatural beings who eat books instead of food, and a mother desperate to save her child are only the tip of the iceberg for this debut novel. The Book Eaters is a complex exploration of family dynamics alongside the ups and downs of motherhood and womanhood. In many ways, while the supernatural element is key to the entire story, as it drives the behaviors of several characters, this plot element takes a backseat to the central theme of family and everything Devon does to protect hers. It is also a powerful story, flitting between past and present, which allows readers to understand the Book Eater show more family dynamics while following along with Devon as she searches for solutions to an untenable situation. If you are like me, the idea of someone physically reading books will draw you into the book, but you continue reading because you will find yourself invested in Devon’s story. Highly recommend! show less

No puns, but I really, really loved this book! Like The Handmaid's Tale meets Let The Right One In, Sunyi Dean will see your vampire lore and your zombies and raise you - book eaters and mind eaters, a secret society comprised of six 'Families' who devour knowledge in rather different ways.

I wish I could absorb stories by eating the actual pages - book eaters are probably the people who bemoan the existence of Kindles - but I have to start small, with the characters and the plot, and I was fell right in with Devon and Cai. Their world is dark and dangerous, on the run from the men who control them and the monsters who can kill them. But Devon and Cai are monsters too.

Devon - I thought that the quirk of naming Family members after place show more names was cute - is the princess of Fairweather Manor and grows up on a diet of fairy tales about heroines being rescued and living happily ever after. A very different fate awaits her, however. The female book eaters exist only to intermarry with other Families and have children - but they cannot be mothers. They must move on and marry again. When Devon is taken away from her young daughter, she is heartbroken and a seed of rebellion is planted. She tries to hold onto the fantasy that she will be rewarded for following the rules, but then her son is born and must be protected from those who want to kill him. Her brother in law, the wonderful Jarrow, persuades Devon to break the cycle and save her son Cai.

The worldbuilding, though! Vampires are old hat and I have never understood the appeal of zombies but a hunger for knowledge? A taste for the written word? Makes sense to me! Book eaters, although superhumanly strong and able to see in the dark, cannot write for themselves Mind eaters, born with a proboscis like tongue, go straight to the source and drain intelligence, memories and personality from people by sucking parts of the brain out of their victims' ears. While the Families are in control, ruled by patriarchs, 'knights' are charged with controlling mind eaters, or 'dragons', with a drug called Redemption. The women are valued only for their reproductive role and are biologically 'retired' after having two children, to become 'aunts'. The patronising faux chivalry and old-fashioned attitudes of the Families drove me mad, which is entirely the point, I realise, but luckily Devon's narrative flips back and forth between the past and the present, so we can feed on her fire to save herself and her son. Cai, incidentally, is also an amazing character, a young boy with an old soul who takes on the lost lives of his victims.

I honestly haven't been so addicted to a book in ages! I was reading at home, late at night, on the bus, during my dinner hour, and couldn't get enough. The UK setting probably helped, even if a few Americanisms (and shootouts) from the author slipped in every now and again! Definitely recommended for book eaters everywhere, and I hope there's a sequel in the pipeline! show less

Originally posted on Just Geeking by.

Content warnings:
The author lists the following content warnings on GoodReads:

Body horror, gore, explicit violence, domestic abuse, violence against children.

I also want to add:

This book contains scenes of violence against women which includes two scenes of sexual assault, one where the main character is drugged. There are multiple scenes of emotional abuse towards women, and towards a gay male character. There are also scenes of and references to homophobia, physical abuse, torture, gun violence, forced disability, and murder.

As soon as I heard about The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean I knew I had to read it. I mean, come on, a book about people eating books?! As a library studies graduate and lifelong show more bookworm this book sounding amazing. It ended up being a lot darker than I expected which was not a bad thing. The Book Eaters delves into a lot of serious issues, and I was completely hooked from start to finish.

In The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean a race of creatures called the book eaters exist, feeding on the stories of humans. They live hidden away from humans, dependent on their creativity to survive because book eaters, eaters for short, can’t create, they can’t even write. In eater societies there is a large disparity between the amount of men versus women, making it a patriarchal society where women are treated like princesses as children until they become old enough to be married off to breed. Eater women can only have two children in their lifetime, and raised on a diet of fairytales they live in an extremely sheltered world until they go to their first marriage bed.

We see all this from the perspective of Devon, the protagonist of The Book Eaters, as she hides from her family with her second child. Through flashbacks, we learn of the dreadful trauma that she went through in her first and the second marriage. When Devon’s second son is born a mind eater Devon is determined to keep him safe, especially after her first daughter was taken from her. Instead of feeding on books, mind eaters feed on the minds and souls of humans. Mind eaters do not have a place in eater society, they are used as weapons by the Knights to police the Families. A drug produced by one of the other Families allows mind eaters to eat books like a normal book eater, however, when that Family spontaneously implodes due to a civil war the drug production vanishes.

These events unfolding elsewhere in the book eater world have terrifying consequences for Devon and her newborn child, and she ends up running to save them both. As the book goes on we find out that there is much more going on, and the horrors that Devon endured has never stopped. Without the drug to help her son eat books Devon has to make the difficult decision to feed humans to her son otherwise he won’t survive.

This is a very dark book, and I’m not going to lie, a five-year-old devouring people’s minds by eating their brains and then adopting their personalities is extremely disturbing. He has devoured over twenty people at one count, and as a result he acts like an adult rather than a normal five-year-old. There are other mind eaters in the book, and not to give too much away, but Dean asks some provocative questions about what about us and our minds defines us as a person.

I found it devastatingly sad and poignant that the female eaters were lured into believing that they were princesses, that they were special, and then the facade was violently ripped away by their first husband. Dean is clearly playing with fairytale tropes, subverting them and using them to comment on women’s trauma. I couldn’t help but think that while The Book Eaters is a work of fiction, there are some young women who are sheltered just as Devon was and are taught that the bad things only happen to women from certain backgrounds, and areas. That it’s their fault that things happen to them. The idea that young women live in a fairytale is actually a reality.

I enjoyed the fragments of scientific analysis and historical facts at the start of each chapter that offered information about what the eaters were, their origins and so forth. It prevented information dumping while also having the added effect of making the reader curious about the author and how a book about eaters ever got published in the first place. It was another element of mystery, a tantalising tease for the reader who would wonder whether it would link up with the main story or was just an added bonus.

While this is a dark book that highlights women’s trauma, it is important to point out that it is also a book about taking control of life and saying no to what is expected. Due to the low amount of female book eaters and the fact that they can only have two pregnancies in a lifetime, the book eater world is extremely heteronormative. Dean’s book is about several LBGT characters, their experiences in their society and their fight for a better world. The Book Eaters is about found family, fighting for what is important and blood definitely not being thicker than water.

For more of my reviews please visit my blog! show less