Truth is found between the stories we're fed and the stories we hunger for.
Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book's content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.
Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon―like all other book eater women―is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories.
But real life doesn't always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger―not for books, but for …
Truth is found between the stories we're fed and the stories we hunger for.
Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book's content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.
Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon―like all other book eater women―is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories.
But real life doesn't always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger―not for books, but for human minds.
I don't know how to categorize this book -- literary gothic horror? It combines disparate flavors masterfully, with just the right amount of tawdry thriller thrown into the mix to make it accessible to a mass audience. It's like a master chef making an "elevated" pineapple pizza. This is one I'll be coming back to again.
Honestly spectacular, genuine and fresh. A seven-course meal of a novel that served up everything I wanted and more. I'm sated.
The Book Eaters is an original idea. At least, I've never come across another book in which a vampiric race sustains itself by ingesting books. It's a gothic family horror in which the main character, Dev, must save her child, a rare type of vampire who doesn't live on books but rather by feeding on human minds. The novel's plot takes many twists and turns with it's associated double and triple crosses.
I kept flipping between 3 and 4 stars on this rating, so it's a solid 3.5 stars. While the mother's plight is relatable, the book vampires are so alien a concept I had difficulty empathizing with them. She certainly commits some reprehensible acts to ensure her son's survival.
How did one give shape to absence? Fill a black hole with light?
I added The Book Eaters to my reading list after seeing it was nominated in the 2022 Fantasy category. I'm no stranger to fantasy and enjoy different takes on the genre. The Book Eaters is a low fantasy story with a very unique magic system.
It's a fun concept simply told. Right off the bat I was enthralled by the idea of a book eater.
There is also Victorian era/Bourgeoisie/Vampire vibe to the story where families can be comprised of different types of eaters, they are self governed but also have to work together to keep the harmony.
It is one thing to have a repository of data, and quite another to use it.
Unfortunately the story, albeit short, wore on, felt repetitive and I didn't find myself as interested in the characters.
I could see …
How did one give shape to absence? Fill a black hole with light?
I added The Book Eaters to my reading list after seeing it was nominated in the 2022 Fantasy category. I'm no stranger to fantasy and enjoy different takes on the genre. The Book Eaters is a low fantasy story with a very unique magic system.
It's a fun concept simply told. Right off the bat I was enthralled by the idea of a book eater.
There is also Victorian era/Bourgeoisie/Vampire vibe to the story where families can be comprised of different types of eaters, they are self governed but also have to work together to keep the harmony.
It is one thing to have a repository of data, and quite another to use it.
Unfortunately the story, albeit short, wore on, felt repetitive and I didn't find myself as interested in the characters.
I could see this book being excellent if it was within the larger eaters universe. Perhaps a different perspective from Harrow (right? the cousin?) or a glimpse into what the eaters society was like earlier. And then when we arrive at Devon's story there is a bit more investment in the characters.
Going by the Goodreads star rating, the story was okay but I didn't "like it". There were elements that were interesting and could appeal to others, as evident by the pretty high rating of the book. If there was more focus on the eaters, how their reproduction challenges are being faced, include some social commentary that you get from a secret society of mutants, etc. then maybe that little extra would give me something to grab on to and I could enjoy the story more.
It's hard to find books with unique approaches to fantasy, so I'm always excited to find a story that's truly original. This is one of them. The story is about a subspecies of humans (maybe?) who eat books instead of food, and they absorb the information in books they eat. Their society reminded me of an extreme evangelical religious cult run by the men. The story is about a young woman who tries to escape the crushing patriarchal society to save her son. I found the characters well developed and the story compelling. There are elements of suspense and mystery, trying to figure out what will happen next and who the main character can really trust. I blew through the book in a couple days. Thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Deliciously dark story, interweaving the messages of fairytales into a story of control and oppression, and one mother's fight to protect her child, against all odds.
A pretty good book overall. I didn't expect it to veer so much into horror territory! The only thing that bothered me was the book kept too many secrets from the reader for too long. There were a couple points that I didn't know what was going on, only for them to be revealed completely out of the blue a couple chapters later. However, I enjoyed this, and will be wary of people saying they're hungry for a while now!
The writing and pacing have momentum but the content is thwarting. The mythology is preposterously systemless and does not stretch imaginative potential to not be a mirror world full of patriarchy. Intimate moments and observations are equally inconsistent regarding character relationships, and all conflict is resolved with violence.
"For Chrissakes, I'm a grown-up. Swearing is my privilege!"
I don't generally read urban fantasy (too "real" in a way I can't really describe, and it tends to bore me), and I definitely don't read vampire/gothic horror stuff (too romance-riddled). But I guess when you throw those genres in a blender with a unique magic system and some found-family LGBT elements, it made the whole thing a whole lot more interesting.
Devon is a book eater, a small, secretive clan of people who, rather than reading books and eating food, eat their books. Like, literally, page by page, cover to cover, omnomnom down the hatch, eat books for sustenance and knowledge. They're a very small clan and predisposed to giving birth to more males than females, so the rare females of the clan live a pampered life of a princess--doomed to arranged marriages and being treated more like property than …
"For Chrissakes, I'm a grown-up. Swearing is my privilege!"
I don't generally read urban fantasy (too "real" in a way I can't really describe, and it tends to bore me), and I definitely don't read vampire/gothic horror stuff (too romance-riddled). But I guess when you throw those genres in a blender with a unique magic system and some found-family LGBT elements, it made the whole thing a whole lot more interesting.
Devon is a book eater, a small, secretive clan of people who, rather than reading books and eating food, eat their books. Like, literally, page by page, cover to cover, omnomnom down the hatch, eat books for sustenance and knowledge. They're a very small clan and predisposed to giving birth to more males than females, so the rare females of the clan live a pampered life of a princess--doomed to arranged marriages and being treated more like property than as people. Not content with this life, Devon escapes with her second child Cai, who himself is a mind eater. Mind eaters are genetically different book eaters, and instead of eating books, eat minds instead. Like, brain matter. Memories. Personalities. That sort of thing. The clans of book eaters generally deal with these aberrations harshly, either training them as weapons or killing them outright. Devon is determined to escape the life she was born to, but still needs to procure 'Redemption', the medicine manufactured by one of the book eater clans that keeps mind eater hunger at bay.
I'm a sucker for a unique magic system. The author fully fleshed out the lore of these book eaters, with the different genres having different tastes, incorporating the knowledge aspect into the story, and having numerous epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter adding to the book eater/mind eater lore. It was really well done. I liked Devon as a main character, and loved the found family/attraction aspect between her and Hester. The book eater clans also had different stories behind each one, though I wish there had been a bit more of that lore fleshed out as well. I thought the story was compelling and interesting, and I appreciated how the current day story was weaved into Devon's story from ten years ago. The side-by-side telling was well done.
I really only wish there had been some inclusion or closure on the Salem aspect. The author has said here that this was intended as a stand-alone and is not supposed to have a sequel which is a little disappointing, but entirely understandable.
I had a lot of fun with this book, and I'm glad I gave it a chance.
This book is a darkly incredible foray into abuse that has trickled down from past generations to the future ones. I couldn’t help but identify with Devon’s struggle to break the cycle with her own son Cai, especially with her lamenting when she fails to live up to the person she wants to be—a role-model she never had, trying to create a better world for her son than the one she grew up in.
This is a contemporary fantasy that takes place in England, but it’s split storyline. While the present-day Devon’s storyline takes place in or near present-day, there’s also another storyline with her younger self in childhood, and the way the two are woven together is absolutely masterfully done. Dark, terrible things happen to Devon bringing her to her present-day quest to save her son, but they aren’t lingered on or described in detail. Instead, the reader is …
This book is a darkly incredible foray into abuse that has trickled down from past generations to the future ones. I couldn’t help but identify with Devon’s struggle to break the cycle with her own son Cai, especially with her lamenting when she fails to live up to the person she wants to be—a role-model she never had, trying to create a better world for her son than the one she grew up in.
This is a contemporary fantasy that takes place in England, but it’s split storyline. While the present-day Devon’s storyline takes place in or near present-day, there’s also another storyline with her younger self in childhood, and the way the two are woven together is absolutely masterfully done. Dark, terrible things happen to Devon bringing her to her present-day quest to save her son, but they aren’t lingered on or described in detail. Instead, the reader is distanced from the events as Devon distances herself from what happens, as a way to survive.
I loved the way the culture of the Book Eaters was explored and revealed, with its struggle to stay unknown in a modern world that moves increasingly fast. I also appreciated the way dark subjects were dealt with, neither glorifying or shockingly, but also without shying away from them: things like emotional abuse and its effects, sexual assault, and physical abuse.
Devon was raised as a princess, punished only by being forced to eat dictionary pages instead of fairy tales, but with the full expectation that once she was grown she would fulfill her duty and give two other Families a child each, after which she could come back home and do as she pleased.
But Devon’s son is a mind eater. To the Family, mind eaters are monsters who must be shut away and quelled firmly by Knights who are trained in how to break their spirits and “train” them to obey. Devon’s not about to let that happen to her son, though.
The only way to save her son is to secure him a drug that will allow him to eat books instead of minds. A drug that has become impossible to find in recent years. Impossible, however, is merely a suggestion for Devon.
CW: physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual assault, body horror, gore, explicit violence, domestic abuse, violence against children
I was given a copy of this book, but that has not affected my review to the best of my knowledge.