The Book Eaters

by Sunyi Dean

Synopsis:

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.

I had a bit of a mixed time with Sunyi Dean’s The Book Eaters: there were parts of the core concept that didn’t feel well done to me, because it refused to just call it magic and instead had various biological explanations/solutions to things, while making absolutely no sense from a biological point of view. You can’t chew printed paper and swallow it to know and understand the words on it. I’m happy to go along with it if you want to call it magic, but don’t try to kid me there’s any biological way that’s going to work.

I think a lot of other readers are happy to put that kind of thing aside, and I would be, apart from the part where one of the characters explicitly refuses to call it magic, and technological solutions to the characters’ problems (like medications and IVF) are a key part of the story. Just! Call it! Magic! Even if you’re still going to reference IVF, I can manage that suspension of disbelief much better than if you are trying to tell me that there’s a biological way to consume and digest conventional printed books in a way that provides both energy for physical processes and instantly-acquired knowledge. There simply isn’t. It was just goofy.

On the other hand, the emotional side of things is really well done. I absolutely believe in Devon’s love for her kids, in the twisted monstrousness of both her and Cai, in the fraught kinship between Devon and Ramsey, Hester and Killock. There were some horrific and powerful scenes, and that aspect is what kept me reading even when the worldbuilding was completely crumbling. These aren’t good people, but they’re desperate people seeking freedom, and you can feel for them despite the horrors.

The blurb highlighted the queer love story and I have to say that was an afterthought, unfortunately. There are queer characters and the tentative beginnings of a relationship, but “a queer love” definitely overstates it. That’s probably the fault of whoever wrote the blurb, to be clear, but it sets the wrong expectations.

Overall, a very mixed bag for me, and difficult to rate. I can see what others love in it, and it’s fine to take my complaints about the biology with a grain of salt — if you can just ignore the suggestions that it’s biological and not magical, then you can probably enjoy this a lot more.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)