The Book Eaters’ world is similar to ours with the edition of this mostly hidden race. Sunyi Dean shows us love, found family, and the determination to follow your heart even when doing so could lose you everything. She carves out space to be strong even with the weight of society’s expectations against her. I love that despite growing up with a head filled with passive princess tales, Devon refuses to accept a passive role. How do you keep your race going when fertile women are rare.

Imagine that you learn by literally eating books, but remain illiterate, unable to even write your name or text. Sunyi Dean’s created a fascinating race of people. She takes her son and goes on the run from the Families and their Knights. Being forced to leave her daughter shatters her. Being bartered into marriage was a rude awakening as she realizes that her sole worth is as a broodmare. Marriage contracts are for limited amounts of time and children stay with the fathers’ families.ĭevon grew up in her family’s moldering mansion, isolated on the Moors, being fed fairy tales about princesses. Book Eaters can’t read – they learn and exist by eating books. About The Book Eatersĭevon is a Book Eater, a race that lives hidden among humans.

Sunyi Dean’s debut, The Book Eaters, is a dark, contemporary fantasy that takes a brutally hard look at women’s place in society, motherhood, the patriarchy, and love. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 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 received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. 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. Living among humans and finding prey for her son, Devon seeks a cure for his hunger. The last of their lines, they exist on the fringes of society and subsist on a diet of stories and legends.Ĭhildren 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. Hidden across England and Scotland live six old Book Eater families. 'A vampire-themed Handmaid's Tale, with effective thrills that are intensified by social commentary' GuardianĪ gorgeous new fantasy horror - a book about stories and fairy tales with family and love at its dark heart.

The book eaters book review