This is a great story, but I struggled a lot. The magic system is intricate and very cool but the pacing of this book was hard for me. Big things happened very fast and I feel like I was left in the dust. I actually don't know how much time passed between the beginning and end 🤔
Lorena's character growth and relationships with other characters seemed to come from nowhere. And the world building never seemed to end.
I've never read anything from Linsey Miller before, and I suspect her writing style just isn't my jam. I have no doubt that there are plenty of others that will enjoy it.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read this ARC.

What can I say except...I devoured it. Ace main character, Multiple other queer & POC characters, without them feeling tokenized. All set in a fantasy, horror land that definitely isn't for the light hearted. Linsey Miller strikes again.

Genre: YA Fantasy Rating: ⭐⭐

Thank you to NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Fire for allowing me to review an ARC of What We Devour by Linsey Miller!

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.

Loved this book! It kept my attention the entire time and I just devoured it. I really enjoyed that it was a different take on magic that I haven't seen before. I do have some questions but they are about minor world building things.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for gifting me a copy of this book to review. This was an okay read, there were parts I loved and others that I didn’t enjoy as much.
I loved the premise behind this book and it was why I wanted to read it. The writing style was okay. Unfortunately I just found it a little convoluted and confusing. I spent quite a lot of this book wondering what was happening and if I’d missed something somehow. Anyway I was very confused and it made me stop enjoying the book and I had to force myself to finish it.

The main characters were good and I found them interesting. I enjoyed the morally grey main character and I loved the ace representation in this book. I think the asexual aspect could have been written a little better but I was happy to see it. The side characters were forgettable and I didn’t really get to know them.

The world building was okay but I wish there was more. I wanted more information.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I stopped reading this book at 28%. I could not continue reading it anymore because I was very confused.

BUT let's talk about what I liked first.
I actually enjoyed the characters in this book. There was an interesting cast of characters, and I genuinely wanted to know more about each one of them. Also, the representation was *chef's kiss* delightful. We have ace, non-binary, bisexual, and probably more that I just didn't catch when it comes to queer characters. One thing that I specifically want to acknowledge is that the author actually used the word "locs" which is the correct term for that hairstyle. That attention to detail needs to be commended.

I also really enjoyed the concept. It's fun. It's funky. It's fresh. This is an idea that has my attention. Clearly. I wouldn't have picked up the book if I weren't interested. I love the creativity behind the idea, and I think that there is a lot of potential for a really good story.

Now, the not so good parts. I genuinely had no idea what was going on at any point as I was reading this. To be fair, I just recently finish grad school so my brain is a bit tired. However, I could not follow the story at all. I'm not quite clear on what the noblewright and the vilewright actually are, and I had a hard time following the storyline with Will on top of the main story. It felt a bit disorganized and was a challenge to follow. I wish there had been more of a lead into the story.

Content Warning: Gore, Violence, Self Harm

What We Devour centres around a morally grey heroine fighting for what she believes to be right. In Lorena's world, magic stems from the creatures within: the Noblewrought create, and the Vilewrought destroy. Lorena is one of the few Dualwrought, born with both a Noble and a Vile - but magic cannot be practiced without something being given up first. This anti-capitalist tale pushes the limits of sacrifice, in a sometimes gruesome fashion, leaving you reeling at the horror it has become.

This starts off in a whirlwind, and does not stop to catch a breath. Incredibly fast-paced, it seemed like an entire chronicle of events was spun into this single novel. It <i>was</i> somewhat refreshing to be able to pick up the book and swing directly into motion, and it meant that an understanding of the world and how it functioned grew relatively quickly. However, I did find at some points that the plot was moving a little <i>too</i> quickly for my liking, and it was difficult to keep up. There were a few instances where a character would enter seemingly out of the blue, and I would feel like I was reading a play rather than a novel, because it seemed so out of left field. Other times, characters would mention something, or jump to a conclusion, and I would find myself having to backtrack and re-read in order to grasp the context of what was happening, which was incredibly frustrating - by the time I got to about 2/3 of the way through the book, I just gave up and let the rest of the book happen to me.

I loved the concept of this book, the world was fleshed out, and the magic system was unique. However, the pacing of this book was a major drawback for me, and truly impeded my ability to connect with this story as much as I would have liked.

I received an ARC from Sourcebooks Fire in exchange for an honest review

I adored Miller’s Mask of Shadows & Belle Revolte, and was really looking forward to this book. Unfortunately What We Devour wasn't what I hoped it would be.

If you want a dark book that’s a character-heavy story, this could be the one for you. I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because I enjoyed the characters so much.

I liked Lorena Adler’s character and her development. Seeing her change from the kind and giving undertaker she was at the beginning to the Dualwrought at the end was one of the few things I truly enjoyed about this book. While she did change gradually, I felt her internal moral struggle could have been more obvious on the page at some points. Lorena is asexual and it’s a big part of her character. One character is very acephobic, but he is always shown as the one in the wrong in these moments, and it was awesome to see an ace character never doubting their identity or putting someone’s desires over their own boundaries.

The characters all have their own sad or dark pasts, united by their contracts and their wroughts/wrights. I found them all interesting; though I wish the wroughts/wrights aside from Lorena and the prince had had more time to shine. My favourite relationship was Carlow and Creek’s. I desperately wanted to know more about them than what was given, hinted at, and implied throughout the book. Carlow’s curse made their potential romantic relationship something the reader both desired and dreaded. The abilities differed among the wroughts. They showcased them and the extent that they could take them to throughout the book, which provided a little bright spot here and there.

I get the gist of what Miller was trying to accomplish with this book, but I think she put too much focus in some areas and not enough in others.

The world-building was good in the beginning, but it continued throughout the book and it was never ‘light’ additions – it always made the world more complicated in a manner that made me have to rethink how everything fit together.

This book had a very strong beginning but the plot became too convoluted immediately afterwards, leaving me extremely lost for the majority of it. I didn’t understand what was happening half the time. There were so many implications, but it was rare that it was clear what, exactly, was being implicated. They were either far too subtle, or not meant to be clear so the answers came as more of a shock later on. Regardless, it was a huge turn-off and I found it hard to pick this book back up every time I put it down.

It also wasn’t clear at multiple points what the group’s next attempt at sealing the Door was going to entail, leaving myself as the reader confused about the group’s next phase of experimenting. Again, this could have been on purpose to garner more surprise. If so, it wasn’t the best decision in my opinion.

What We Devour is a character-heavy story, but the relationships progressed too quickly, and with the time-jumps, a chunk of those progressions weren’t even on the page. There also aren’t a lot of actual repercussions that Lorena faces despite the severity of some of her actions. The fact that her plans almost always went off without a hitch or any deviation didn’t really help either. I wanted to see her thinking fast on her feet in a moment where the tiniest slipup would be the end.

I love that Miller took time to show that Lorena knew the relationship she was in was toxic and she knew she deserved better after all she’d done and given to her partner and his family. She also knew what she was doing in her relationship with the prince. The difference between her ex-partner and her was that she knew what she was doing was cruel, and wrong, and made no attempt to convince herself otherwise. She put the lives of many over the lives of one. I love me a morally gray character.

Another thing I enjoyed about this book was the continuation of Miller’s normalizing of LGBTQ+/queer identities and relationships. The struggles that come with identifying as queer (any of the individual labels, really) are brought up and the characters are (almost) always accepted, validated, and welcomed. As I mentioned before, What We Devour is the exception in this area.

Despite my low rating of What We Devour, I’ll most likely be picking up Miller’s next book as I enjoyed her previous ones so much.

This story is truly fantastic. Throughout this whole book I was faved with unexpected twists and turns which was really enjoyable and kept me very engaged. The characters were unexpectedly engaging adding to my surprise about this book. This book was astoundingly engaging! and such a cool read

I have been excited about this book since I first saw Linsey mentioning the concept & I was so excited to get my hands on the galley! She is a master of magical world building, and each one that she builds is so unique in its concept. Her characters are always incredibly well fleshed out and one either loves them or loves to hate them by the end of the book. This book of dark magic, wrights and wroughts, the dead being used as magical objects, and wondering who is really the good and bad here, is twisted, phenomenal, and I can’t wait for more.

What We Devour Paperback – July 6, 2021

by Linsey Miller

Thank you to Ms. Miller and her publish and Netgalley for the complimentary eARC. I am choosing to leave a fair and honest review.

In 2017, I had the luck and the joy of reading Miller's Mask of Shadows. It was such an amazing book and had such a fascinating gender-fluid main character, I took the step to suggest the book be considered for the Tiptree Award. I was excited to have been approached to review Miller's new epic fantasy book. I am pleased to announce that this book was worth the wait.

Lorena (Lore to her friends) is one of two dual wroughts. And she is the only one unmarked, allowing her to use her powers freely. The heir to the Sundered Crown, a disturbingly sexy combination of Patrick Bateman and every broken boy in fantasy, finds her and drags her back to the capitol to experiment with her Unbound dualwrights – both Noble and Vile. He wants to destroy the Door, a gateway into the world of the Vile gods, because of the volume of sacrifices required to keep it closed.
And that's just the premise.

Miller's writing is a bizarrely beautiful, much like Clive Barker, the mater of gorgeously grotesque horror. The world she has created, where the dead become useful magical items and where contracts are required to work with the Wrights – supernatural beasties connected to the Wroughts and used for magic.

The writing is stunningly beautiful, even at its most frightening. Her world building is perfectly on point – I could at times, almost feel the dirt in my own hand – she should give a masterclass on it. Her magical system is brilliant. She has created a magic that requires a true sacrifice.

The characters we deep, and deeply flawed, which made them all that much more real. Like living, breathing humans, they exist in shades of grey. No one is truly the hero and the villains are themselves.

This is a work by a dazzling newish talent. I personally can't wait to watch Linsey Miller's career!

5+ stars out of 5

https://www.amazon.com/What-We-Devour-Linsey-Miller-ebook/dp/B08KHT3NJ2

What We Devour was an amazing dark story. I enjoyed reading this book at night and I had the best experience. I enjoyed the magic system and the complex characters. What I do recommend for future readers is to pay close attention and focus because at times it can be confusing. This is a perfect book to read during Halloween/fall season. Can’t wait to recommend this book to my students and own a copy for my personal library. Thank you NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to receive and early copy.

By the beginning of the third chapter, I absolutely knew I had to preorder this one! Miller skillfully folds the reader into a new fantasy world, giving just enough detail to follow along without any info-dumps to be seen!

Full review and IG post links to be added after final print copy is read.

I don’t think this dark YA fantasy really broke new ground, but then it didn’t need to. Miller uses well worn tropes with mastery, breathing life back into somewhat tired plot beats. I found myself rooting for Lorena, the morally grey heroine, and I enjoyed the beauty and the beast allusions. This is Miller’s best book yet.

Wielding power frequently requires sacrifice and the reality of both power and sacrifice is shown in What We Devour by Linsey Miller.

Within a world where the constructive and destructive abilities of banished gods, the Noble and the Vile, respectively, some people wield one of those powers through a wright bound to them. Though Lorena has demonstrated that she has a wright, serving as an undertaker in a small town, she keeps secret that she’s actually dualwrought while spending her life hiding from the world, as well as her past. When the father of her betrothed, who’s also her best friend, is accused of treason by the Vile crown prince, Lorena makes a deal to provide a fair trial in exchange for her service to the crown, who recognizes her for what she is. Leaving the small town for the palace with the prince, Lorena learns about the prince’s desperate attempts to repair the Door that prevents the Vile from coming through to their world and wreaking havoc. The Door, which is typically pacified, briefly, through immense sacrifices, taunts those near it and it’s through their research and her tenacity for treating all people as people that Lorena realizes she may need to embrace less favorable aspects of her duality in order for the masses to survive.

The characters in this story, as well as their interactions with one another, were fascinating to watch develop, especially as there was good diversity depicted in their lives and views, along with the sense of tension built up as a result of these dynamics. The moral dilemmas and social commentary presented around concepts such as the real price of capitalism, what constitutes value, what qualifies as for the common good, and manipulation are well explored. The world and the magic that runs through it is intriguing and though it’s explored decently, there were frequent moments where it felt like you were missing something vital; for example, some descriptions, particularly for visuals relating to wrights, didn’t seem to be developed (or clearly conveyed) until quite a way into the story to provide better context for reader comprehension of what exactly was happening. The darkness of the world itself comes through easily with the atmosphere described and the plentiful physical sacrifices made to enact magic but it would have been a more satisfying read to have the world fleshed out and clarified a bit more to meet with the ambitious complexity of the commentary.

Overall, I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars.

*I received a copy of the book from the Publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

What We Devour by Linsey Miller is a dystopian fantasy novel where Lorena, once ousted as a power to fear, will do anything she can to survive. This is a dark and blood filled book with a heavy plot and the risk of death everywhere.
I loved reading about an interesting, strong personality asexual character. This is so rare and refreshing. I loved the thinly veiled criticism of power structure. It feels so relevant to today, where more people are struggling than ever in a real class war.
Some of the ideas feel a little muddled at the beginning. This book touches on many things and goes fast. There is no time for descriptions, which I’m totally ok with, but it might lose some. The magic system is very different, and while it doesn’t seem exciting at first, it makes for interesting conundrums. There was a bit of a middle slump for me, but I enjoyed the read and recommend it for non squeamish people.

CW: gore, violence, acephobia (heroine is ace)

This one left me feeling some type of way.

On one hand, I appreciate that it's big on social commentary and complex character relationships and eerie cosmic horror element.

On the other, the execution felt messy; I was deeply bored all throughout the first half but excited albeit rather confused in the second half.

I am a sucker for villainous/morally grey heroines, and Lorena Adler certainly fits the mold. She's downright vicious without being evil, per se, and completely dedicated in her pursuit of justice. Watching her hurtle toward the climax of the story, making those terrible yet fascinating choices, was delightful. I also was rather invested in her relationship with Alistair; those two really are something with how they play off of each other.

Still, there was a certain coldness in the rest of the novel that chilled the pace of the novel to a halt for the first half. The side characters were hard to get invested in, and seemed to exist as vehicles to further the themes without having ample humanity to make me care. There were also points of the magic system that seemed confusing, which bothered me as I struggled to remember the rules of what was at play. Noblewrights and Vilewrights were straightforward enough, but the science experiments and the curses were a bit much. I'm also not sure that the writing really resonated with me. I often had a hard time figuring who was speaking, or how the scene transitions worked.

What helps to make up for the coldness would be the themes of anti-capitalism and a very "eat the rich" mentality that really resonates in a time when the wealth disparity has never been starker than when a deadly illness is at large. I really enjoyed the exploration of these themes, especially when you have various parties, some more "sympathetic" than others, that all default back to the same classist ideas that devalue human life. I rather liked how much this book asked you to question any of your preconceived notions of who is valuable to society.

As an added treat, I do appreciate the heroine dunking on the acephobic bigots in her life. We love to see it.

I don’t know what else to say. This book was a hot mess. I was hyped for the ace rep, I was hyped for the dark, brutal fantasy, and I was hyped for the bloodthirsty love interest. What I got was….well I suppose the ace rep was solid. The characters were flat and unimaginative, and often times it didn’t seem like even the author had a good graph on their characters. The worldbuilding was severely lacking, both in the political aspect and the general magic with the Vile and Noblewrights.

That being said, there’s not a whole lot I can say without just bashing on this book, so instead, this review will primarily be a case study this country’s logistics using some of the absolutely batshit numbers provided in this book. Please, author, I beg you. Double check your numbers before you make them arbitrarily big.

I love a good pragmatic protagonist and I thought Lorena, with her “the prince and I are using each other” was going to be that. Then halfway through the book, when she finds out the prince used his extra knowledge over a situation to use her, it’s all “I CAN’T BELIEVE HE USED ME???”. Seriously? Honestly, it felt like Miller wanted to write commentary about social inequality and how the rich systematically screw over the poor, then created a character to say those lines, regardless of whether those lines felt in character. It’s difficult to cheer for a character who’s entire motivation is moral superiority over rich people when her powers center around killing people.

The worldbuiding…. well. We know these characters exist in a country that’s completely isolated from the rest of the world (how they manage to support themselves without outside trade, no idea but it’s never mentioned). The country was once ruled by…malevolent…gods(??) called the Noble and Vile, which humanity managed to banish (but not really) and they also managed to eat some of those gods to gain their powers. Also there’s a queen who’s Evil and some councilors who are Greedy and that’s the extent of the worldbuilding. All of which sounds really cool, except absolutely none of it gets explored. With how weirdly detached the writing style was and how uninteresting the characters were, it was really hard to feel like anything had stakes.

Now for the fun part, because aside from the delightful ace rep, this book was bad. 2/5 stars.

I offer the following math problem:

An evil Door in the country of Cynlira requires human sacrifices.

If the Door is not fed its requisite number of sacrifices, it shall unleash the Evil Old Gods it seals away upon the world

The number of human sacrifices requires grows exponentially.

At the beginning of the book, the Door requires 3 sacrifices/month.

A palace scholar and Door researcher has projected that in 5 months. the Door shall require 600,000 sacrifices.

a) How many total sacrifices are required between the start of the book to the projected 5 months?

Using Excel, we can graph our two known data points, then build an exponential growth model to determine equation, which gives us:



Thus, we’ll need a total of 6.3 million sacrifices. Month five does make up for the majority, but 300,00 sacrifices for months 1-4 is nothing to scoff at either. By the US 2010 Census, that’s slightly below the population of Tampa, FL (336,150). In a country like Cynlira, with a population of 6 million (approximately the population of Singapore), that’s a lot of fucking people.

Out of curiosity, that’s add a second question.

b) The total population of Cylinra is 6 Million. Using our model, lets look one month forward. 600,000 is a lot of people, how much could that possibly grow?


Uh……..well RIP Cynlira. Forget 600,000. For month six, the queen will need to sacrifice 12.7 Million people. Over double Cynlira’s entire population. Exponential growth is a bitch.

I calculated these numbers about a third-way through the book, after the back of my mind started tingling that 600,000 sacrifices seemed a little too damn. Honestly, it almost made reading the book funny, reading characters who seemed totally freaked out by the fact that they only had five months to destroy the door lest they be forced to kill 600,000 people, while completely ignoring the sacrifice of a large city in month four, or the destruction of the entire country at month 6.

Now that we’ve determined this country is well and truly fucked, let’s take a closer look at the logistics of actually sacrificing 600,000 people to the Door. In the book, MC is only present for a single sacrifice and the mechanics and timing aren’t particularly well explained, so we’re going to have to set some boundaries.

First, some assumptions

The Door can only consume one person at a time
A Door consuming sacrifices is one that is too busy to unleash worse things
The total time taken between sacrificing one person and loading the next person up to be sacrificed is exactly 1 min (this seems short but trust me, you’ll see why)
A Vilewrought must be present to activate the door for each sacrifice (currently there are three)
Sacrifices occur round the clock, 24/7. There are no breaks. (again, harsh, but you’ll understand why)
We’re running Jeff Bezos, Amazon warehouse, pee-in-a-cup level work conditions for the guards, various staffers, etc moving our sacrifices to the Door, so no breaks or other disruptions to the workflow need be accounted for
c) How long would it take to sacrifice 600,000 people to the Door, given the assumptions above?

600000 people * \frac{1 min}{person} = 600,000 min \\ 600000 min * \frac{1 hour}{60 min} = 10,000 hours \\ 10,000 hours * \frac{1 day}{24 hours} = 416.67 days \\ 416.67 days * \frac{1 year}{365 days} = 1.14 years

From some Quick Maths™, sacrificing 600,000 people at a rate of 1/min, with no pauses or disruptions or breaks, will take 1.14 years. Also keep in mind, with a Vilewrought presence required at all times, either the Queen, Prince or MC will need to be there to supervise, likely in 8 hours shifts. Suddenly, I don’t suspect much functioning governance coming out from the country’s royalty, which would lead to a whole host of other issues. More importantly, despite the calculations from part a) and b) above, our characters wouldn’t be worried about next month, so much as next year. The research team has been given significantly more time at least?

Finally, let’s see what speed would be necessary to do this in one month.

d) How quickly would the sacrifices need to be sacrificed to sacrifice 600,000 people in one month?

1 month *\frac{30 days}{1 month} = 30 days \\ 30 days *\frac{24 hours}{1 day} = 720 hours \\ 720 hours * \frac{60 min}{1 hour} = 43,200 minutes \\ 43200 minutes * \frac{60 sec}{1 min} = 2,592,000 seconds \\ \frac{2592000 seconds}{600000 sacrifices} = 4.32 \frac{sec}{sacrifice}

More Quick Maths™ tells us we’ll need to be running a rate of 1 sacrifice per 4.32 seconds, which is…quite speedy. That’s one busy door. I suppose Cynlira ought to invest in some conveyor belt tech.

These numbers and this “case study” are quite goofy and purely the imagination of a bored engineer who saw some suspicious numbers in a book and got carried away. The math here isn’t hard, nor the Excel work. Basically, if there’s anything to take away from this, it would be: authors, please please please for the love of God doublecheck your numbers before they’re published.

Review will be published on my blog 18 June 2021, with additional graphs and formulas not pictured here

A good plot but hard to follow at times as the scenes jump too quickly without much of a transition. I found myself rereading paragraphs to ensure I had read it properly. Overall enjoyed it though.

Deliciously dark, WHAT WE DEVOUR asks a question not everyone wants to answer: what are you willing to sacrifice to change your society? With morally gray characters and a world in which the rich work the poor to death, Miller encapsulates the problems of capitalism in with sharp wit and sharper twists.