The Book Eaters
By Sunyi Dean
Blurb
A gorgeous new fantasy horror – a book about stories and fairy tales with family and love at its dark heart…
A gorgeous new fantasy horror – a book about stories and fairy tales with family and love at its dark heart…
Hidden across England and Scotland live six old Book Eater families.
The last of their lines, they exist on the fringes of society and subsist on a diet of stories and legends.
Children are rare and their numbers have dwindled, so when Devon Fairweather’s second child is born a dreaded Mind Eater – a perversion of her own kind, who consumes not stories but the minds and souls of humans – she flees before he can be turned into a weapon for the family… or worse.
Living among humans and finding prey for her son, Devon seeks a cure for his hunger. But time is running out – for her family want her back, and with every soul her son consumes he loses a little more of himself…
This is a story of escape, a mother’s savage devotion and a queer love that will electrify readers looking for something beguiling, thrilling, strange and new.
Our Review
The Book Eaters was a unique read and as soon as I read the blurb I felt it may be a book I may enjoy.
There are six book eater families within England. For years the book eater families have given birth to few girls and so in order to sustain their lines the girls must be married off to other famiies to continue the line. After giving birth the women have three years with their children before they are taken from them and the women are moved on to their next marriage. Every aspect of book eater life is designed to ready girls for this process, even down to the fairy tales they eat.
"Our childhood books always end in marriage and children. Women are taught not to envision life beyond those bonds, and men are taught to enforce those bonds.We grow up in a cultivated darkness and don't even realise we are blind."
Devon has always been a rebel, and when he son is born a mind eater - who consumes minds not books - she knows she must stop at nothing to find the cure for his hunger.
"By the three-week mark, starvation would have ravaged him to thinness, his suffering spiraling into unearable agony as his body began to produce toxins. The madness already gnawed at his mind, incurable except through his next feed, and even after feeding, the craving would remain ever-present."
I liked The Book Eaters, the darkness of the tale and on the whole enjoyed reading it.
Our Final Rating...
Read & Shared 5 Times.
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