Sunyi Dean

I should have known from the book description that I was going to stumble through this one...but being the stubborn individual that I am, I refused to stop reading. So, I will say to begin with that the 2.5-star rating wasn't really any fault of the story or the author...it was just that I didn't "get it" and truthfully, I don't think I really cared enough to try. At the start of the story the main character, Devon, is on the run with her son Cai, who had been born a "Mind Eater", in the present day, carrying out some… extremely morally acts on the "gray' side. We are slowing "drip fed" the past throughout the entire story. It became confusing, as if I wasn't confused enough to start with by interchanging past and present chapters. We learn quickly that Devon will do anything to look after her son's wellbeing. Her "mother of the year looking after" borders on a lot of highly questionable acts. Devon is a 'book-enter". It seems that these "people (?) thrive and survive off of the ink, paper and words of the books they eat.... yes...REALLY EAT. Strange??? Do you think???. The women who are born as book eaters are only supposed to keep their young for a few years and not form any kind of bond with them. There is a bit of the "gay lifestyle" in this story also, which I didn't get at all, and I read a lot of M/M romances. I would consider the story to be a kind of hybrid fantasy/horror. It has won or has been nominated for numerous awards including the NPR Best Sci Fi, Fantasy, & Speculative Fiction Book of 2022, A Goodreads Best Fantasy Choice Award Nominee & A Library Journal Best Book of 2022. I guess if we all liked the same thing there would never be enough to go around and that includes our choice of reading material:)… (altro)

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.… (altro)