Love doesn’t have a cost. It is just a choice you make, the way you choose to keep breathing or keep living. It is not about worth and it’s not about price. Those concepts don’t apply.
Devon Fairweather is a book eater, a human-like creature who feeds on books and knowledge to survive. Devon Fairweather is a princess, one of the very rare women among The Families, the book-eater clans. But, above all, Devon Fairweather is a mother who will do everything and anything to keep her son, Cai, safe from the Families as Cai is a mind eater, someone who feeds on brains to survive. The men in power want to chain him like a monster for their own benefit and there is no way Devon will allow that. She herself has been restrained by the doctrinaire rules of The Families her entire life—her son will be free, or she will die trying.
In The Book Eaters, we follow the past and present of Devon Fairweather and the perilous journey she had to embark in first to survive as a woman in a man-dominated tyranny and then to snatch her son from the claws of the cult-like society of the book eaters. Sunyi Dean’s debut novel is nothing but outstanding.
Fast-paced, insightful, and inventive, The Book Eaters is definitely a work to keep an eye on. Nowadays, due to the immense number of novels released into the world every day, it is becoming increasingly difficult to come across fresh stories that keep you at the edge of your seat. This one is one of those fresh stories. The twist on the vampire tradition, the poignant social criticism, and the beautiful concept of book-eating are a wonderful combination of the familiar and the unknown that just keeps you guessing over and over again. Information is given to the reader beautifully—in small doses that, even if satiating, will just trap you and make you read just one more page, one more chapter.
It is also important to mention the wonderful blend that the author makes of narration, real fiction—each chapter that is set in the past is introduced with a real book quote, closely linked to what is happening in the novel, such as The Princess Bride, The Scarlet Letter or Rapunzel—and excerpts from a journalistic academic research on book eaters that just reads unbelievably real. Of course, for a work about book eaters, the omnipresence of literature is no surprise, but it is very much appreciated, and the blending of fact and fiction is a true delight. In a way, it adds an extra layer to the overall lore that surrounds the novel, enriching each and every page and giving a whole new meaning to each chapter for the reader to discover.
One could not finish this review without noting that another great point in the narration is that the novel almost reads as an action movie in a way. For the most part it has a certain reminiscence to one of those 1990s/2000s movie where the female lead just kicks ass and has no trouble rescuing herself and those she loves from a patriarchal society, like Underworld or even Resident Evil. Like the main characters from those movies, Devon never takes her eye out of her goal: to protect her son. To be a good mother. To find the cure that will help her and her son be free from the torment of having to torture humans for sustenance. And to cure her own scars.
If this review piqued your appetite, dear reader, please go ahead and consider having this wonderful novel for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. A dash of danger, a pinch of motherly love, a handful of well-rounded and gripping queer characters, and a tablespoon of literary goodness is what you will taste in this delicious concoction. Bon appétit!
The Book Eaters is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of August 2nd 2022.
Will you be picking up The Book Eaters? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book’s content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.
Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon—like all other book eater women—is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairytales and cautionary stories.
But real life doesn’t always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger—not for books, but for human minds.
