Based on the synopsis of this book, I really had high hopes for What We Devour! It’s basically about a girl who lives in a Kingdom where some people have magical abilities based on immortal spirits that attach themselves to mortal beings. The protagonist, Lorena, is unique because she has both a vile and a noble spirit attached to her, which is extremely rare. When the crown prince discovers Lore’s uniqueness, he essentially kidnaps her to help him research a magical door that separates the Vile from the human world.

Unfortunately, this book was so convoluted and poorly executed that the end result was very disappointing. The entire book read as if it were a rough draft and events would happen with no explanation. People would randomly show up somewhere unexplained or die without any warning. It felt like the author had a vague outline of a plot and decided to publish that. Honestly, I was shocked when I read that this is Miller’s 5th book.

Additionally, the characters were under-developed and had unexplained relationships with one another. For instance, it seems logical that Lore should feel some animosity towards the prince after he basically kidnaps her, but she is totally chill about it. In fact she willingly helps him and quickly seems to develop a friendship and romantic relationship with him. While this type of relationship is commonly written in fantasy, it should be gradual and reasonable. Lore’s entire relationship with Alistair made absolutely no sense, granted I appreciated that they could understand one another’s point of views.

Furthermore, there were a lot of plot holes and terminology that needed explaining. This book has a very complex magical system that probably needs at least 3 books to thoroughly introduce the reader. While I became more familiar with some of the terms throughout the novel, it was extremely confusing to be introduced to so many concepts with brief explanations. For most of the book I couldn’t consider the actual story because I was too befuddled about the terminology and magic: wroughts, wrights, vilewrought, vilewright, noblewrought, noblewright, sigils, bindings, the Vile, the Noble, Chaos, Order, etc. All these terms flooded me with vague information and made it practically impossible to understand the majority of the book.

Similarly, a major concept in the book is that sacrifices allow a person’s vilewright to basically do magic, but the sacrifices made no sense. If a person sacrifices their sense of pain to heal a wound, how is that a sacrifice? I can understand sacrificing happy memories, or something that actually hurts to lose, but the sacrifices in the book did not make logical sense half the time.

Finally, the characters’ physical descriptions in the novel were definitely a strong point. The author clearly put a lot of work into that aspect of the novel, which allows the reader to vividly imagine what the characters would look like. The author also had some impressive lines, such as, “Laws are not justice.” I think these lines where the characters deliver powerful messages made the book better.

While I was mostly disappointed with this novel, I do think it had potential. Although the characters needed more development, they were unique and original. I’m sure no author wants to hear criticism about their books, but the good thing about What We Devour is that it has a strong starting point and could be fantastic with some development and serious editing. ( )