It would make no sense to combine a vampire lesbian Wuthering Heights with a gothic princess fairy tale. Certainly, no writer should ever aim to add all those things into a speculative fiction novel where the central six “Families” (who a divine—or alien—“Collector” may have placed on Earth) consume only books for nourishment. Somehow, though, Sunyi Dean gets away with this, and more, in The Book Eaters.

https://bookandfilmglobe.com/fiction/book-review-the-book-eaters/

I devoured this book in a day, and was so intrigued by the unique premise. So many aspects of this book were truly unique to itself, and I wanted to know more about book eaters and mind eaters, which incidentally is why this wasn't 5 stars for me, because I really wanted more information and sadly didn't get as much as I'd hoped. This really is more of a story about the main character, Devon, who is a book eater, and her son, who is a mind eater, and their continuous struggle to survive. I loved how the book is a conversation about patriarchal roles and the arbitrary rules we let ourselves follow in the world, and how we defy them. More than anything this felt like a fierce story of survival for a mother, which was done incredibly well, but isn't my main choice when reading something this unique.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tor Books for the digital advanced reader's copy.

3.5 stars

I really enjoyed the world-building in this one. I actually like the beginning of the story much more than the end.

There are book eaters and mind eaters among us who can pass as humans. However, their numbers are small, and they stay mostly isolated in their own clans or Families. Now, the Families are crumbling, and book eater Devon and her mind eater son Cai are caught in the middle of the collapse.

I found the book eater world abosorbing and wanted Dev and Cai to find a way out of the warped patriarchal systems they were stuck in. Regardless of how each Family managed its own estate, woman are always seen as "princesses" - special and spoiled breeders who are useful only to keep the book eater lineage alive.

Dev and Cai's complicated fight to stay alive and safe and together keeps the book moving, but the heart of the book is their love for each other, a love that often requires them to do horrifying things. Love, as Dev points out, isn't always good.

For me, the book faltered a bit at the end, which felt rushed and seemed to have a gaping believability hole - (view spoiler). Also, the dialogue became more stilted and sometimes didactic at the end. Characters were explicitly telling the reader what to think about each situation in way that didn't feel natural, and it just didn't work sometimes.

All in all, I would read another book set in the book eater word (and Dean has definitely set things up for a potential sequel), despite some issues with plot and dialogue. The world is intriguing enough for me to go back for a second helping.

*violence, sexual situations

Fantastic story! I enjoyed the mother/son relationship and the travels around England. Very interesting ideas about the book eaters and mind eaters. Good ending with lots of action but not wrapped up in a bow.

WOW! I have never read anything remotely closed to the Book Eaters before and I just LOVED it. The whole idea is brilliant and was executed near perfectly. Not much else to say besides I wish I could go eat some books too. This is scary at times, but even if that's not your thing, I think you should try The Book Eaters!

I need to be a book eater to be able to go through my TBR. Only I was lucky to be a book eater like the folks in this story and consume all the knowledge in one bite (I would be even luckier because I can eat fast)! Although it is fascinating, I’m still not sure about being a mind eater. I would be incredible to experience someone’s thoughts and emotions ( or whole being) as they experience it but leaving zombies behind won’t work.

There were six families. They hid in their beautiful mansions eating books and inbreeding (because why would you marry lowborn humans?!). Girls were precious because they were rare and they could continue popping babies to keep Families alive. They usually gave a birth to book eaters but occasionally these princesses would give a birth to mind eaters. That’s when problem began. Mind eaters were hard to control and they need “medicine” one family was producing to keep their hunger in check. Can you imagine what could happen if that “medicine” was gone… yeah…

If you liked stories or series of vampire, werewolf, and hunters of those, you’ll like this one too. Technically you can replace blood with books, fangs with book teeth and mind tongue. I liked how author thought that maybe people need an alternative universe where books can be eaten to acquire knowledge!

How far would you go to protect your children?

For Devon and her son, Cai, there doesn't seem to be a limit. She's prepared to leave every other member of her extended family behind, betraying everything she's ever known to ensure that her son will be able to live. She's even willing to bring strangers home for Cai to feast on when he's hungry. See, Devon and her son aren't quite human, despite their appearance. They're members of a species known as Book Eaters. They are sustained not by food and drink, but by paper and ink. Devour a book and immediately know all of the contents of it. Memorize a document in seconds by digesting it. And Cai? Cai's not a standard 'eater. Unlike most members of his species, he craves memories and personalities eaten directly from a victim's brain.

The Book Eaters are endangered, though, with girls being rare. Women in the Six Families of Book Eaters are married out of their manors into arranged weddings in order to provide genetically viable heirs. Two births per mother, then they can live a comfortable existence in one of the family manors. That's the way it has to be. But Devon's separation from her first child left her traumatized, and she was unwilling to go through that pain again.

When Cai is born, it's expected that he'll be drafted into the family's enforcement division as a "dragon" after his limited time with his mother passes. Instead, Devon takes her young son and flees the other Book Eaters, hoping to find a source of a drug that will allow Cai to subsist on books as she does. How long can she make it when a team of dragons is chasing her? How will she cope knowing that her own brother is leading them? You'll have to read Sunyi Dean's The Book Eaters to find out.

The Book Eaters is out in stores as of yesterday. My utmost thanks to NetGalley and Tor/Forge for an advance copy in exchange for a fair review.

***Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for providing me with an electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.***

Devon, the protagonist of Sunyi Dean’s unsettling novel, The Book Eaters, is caught between a rock and a hard place. In her case, the rock is her family and the hard place is her child. Devon’s family is special. They sustain themselves by eating books and not in a metaphorical way. The family keeps to themselves as much as possible. By the time we meet Devon, however, she has managed to break free somehow. Well, sort of. Her rock and her hard place keep her from being truly free. The hope that she might be keeps Devon putting one foot in front of the other as the rock and hard place collide, catching her in the middle.

The Book Eaters jumps back and forth from Devon’s present to her past and it takes several chapters to learn what on earth is going on with Devon and her son, Cai. All we know at first is that Cai is very sick. There’s a drug that can make him well, but the only people who make it have gone off even the secretive book eater grid. Unlike his mother, who draws nourishment from books (the older the better), Cai eats minds. At this point, I realized that, instead of a bookish flavored fantasy, this book is actually a horror novel. This book gets very bloody (or inky, as the case may be) very quickly.

The chapters set in Devon’s past explain why and do absolutely nothing to relieve the creepy atmosphere. Devon, we learn, was the treasured girl-child of a family in decline. The book eaters are struggling to reproduce. As soon as they are of age, girls are entered into arranged marriages in the hope that they will have children before their ovaries shut down. The girls have no choice in the matter. Sometimes, the marriages go well, while they last. Unfortunately for Devon, her first marriage was not good and her second was much worse.

I understood Devon’s motivations. She loves her son and would do anything to keep him alive. On the other hand, I didn’t understand the motivations of her brother, Ramsey, who sets himself up as her antagonist. Where Devon just wants an escape for herself and her son, Ramsey wants to restore the old way of things, with himself bossing everyone around. He’s given a background full of the kind of abuse meant to make him loyal to the “knights” who are tasked with controlling people like Cai and with arranging the marriages that produce the next generations of book eaters. It works too well for me to find it plausible. I found Ramsey’s monologing and stubbornness weirdly one-dimensional, especially in comparison to Devon and Cai’s characterization.

I try not to fault books for not being what I hoped they would be after reading the early publisher blurbs. I wish there had been more about the history of the book eaters. Some of the characters hint at their origins, but we only ever get hints. Instead, the book takes its premise and the wonderful character of Devon and insists on steering the plot into horror and thriller territory. The Book Eaters is an interesting book, sure, but I wouldn’t recommend it to fans of fantasy or dark academia. This book is for readers who like original scenarios along with flying bullets.

This was one of my most anticipated books of the year (hello, look at the cover and description), and it turned out to be much different than I thought. I was picturing it being more fairy tale-esque, but it actually leans a lot more towards horror. But actually now that I’m writing this, the basis for many fairy tales is horrifying, so it’s actually pretty spot on there. Regardless, I loved Devon and watching her save herself from the stifling world she is born into (though I would have loved more explanation into why the book eaters are the way they are besides “it’s always been that way”). There are so many themes explored here from motherhood to power structures to religion, and it sometimes does feel a little bit overextended. I do love the idea that the books we eat and the people we meet and spend time absorbing ideas from form who we are. It’s different and enthralling, and if you’re a fantasy/horror lover, you should check it out!

This book has a really interesting concept and world! I really enjoyed the fact that there are book eaters and it's something very different form what I usually read. Like the idea was so fresh and that's what made me love it.
Devon is is part of a reclusive clan of book eaters where their diet consists of fairytales, thrillers, romances. They all have different tastes.
And then she has a son, and to her absolute horror, she finds that he does not have a hunger for books, but for human minds.

Devon and Cai's bond, in some twisted way, was really cute. I liked reading as they talked to each other. The plot developed with Cai who is the mind eater. His mother tries to find a cure to bring him back to a diet not for human minds but for books.

You guys should read this! It's really interesting, fun and different.

Not knowing what to expect from The Book Eaters going into it, I was pleasantly surprised. It was definitely more fantasy than I was expecting (not a bad thing) and more mature in terms of its content. While the concept of people eating books as a vampire drinks blood is a bit strange and took some time getting used to, I ended up really enjoying the uniqueness that is brought to the story. I can definitely say that I have not read a book quite like The Book Eaters and am interested in the prospect of more books set in this world.

Devon Fairweather is a princess of a book eater family. growing up in Yorkshire. Book eaters eat books for sustenance and absorb the knowledge. Since they are rare, there are rules about procreation. Each book eater princess is required to marry into another book eater family twice in their lifetime and bear each husband one child. Once their children reach the age of three, they leave them behind and return to their own manors to help raise other book eater children.
These doesn't work for Devon. Once she has a child she wants to stay but that's not allowed. Once she bears her second child, she ends up on the run with her son who has a debilitating disorder.
This book is a dark fantasy-horror book about a mother's unconditional love, about what makes a monster and about the fight against patriarchy. It gave me strong Handmaid's Tale vibes. I found it gripping, haunting and I would absolutely love to read more about the book eater families.

I received a copy of this book for review from NetGalley. This is a hard book to review. The pun is bad, but this story about book eaters is a lot to digest. Devon could really use a good therapist when this is all over, because she has been through so much trauma, and almost all of that can be laid directly at the feet of the Families. However, for someone raised as a fairy tale princess, she sure does quickly learn how to do whatever she has to do to keep her son alive. I loved her, and this book is eminently readable, but it is not always a comfortable read, and that is ok. You get to watch Devon learn to think and see outside of the boundaries of her culture and race, and learn to play the game to stay alive.
While this book takes place both in a present day and the past, the plot moves quickly, and the pages turn themselves. I was fascinated by the idea of book eaters and mind eaters, and I want to know more. I would be interested to return to the culture, but I felt like this arc, at least, was a standalone. This book is thought-provoking, interesting, and is still living rent free in my head the next day, so I do highly recommend it.

This book is dark and mysterious and sumptuous and I couldn't help but devour it. This book is like peeling apart an onion - every chapter a new layer that might make you cry if you get too close. The back and forth between past and present creates the perfect amount of intrigue and when it all comes together? A thing of wonder.

The Book Eaters doesn't shy away from difficult topics, but also manages to handle this trauma with incredible care and grace. I also really appreciated the way mind eaters were written - many of their attributes could serve as a sort of allegory for neurodivergence which is sure to give certain readers comfort in being seen. It's left me wishing I too could literally devour books, so this ones details might stick with me a bit longer than usual. I wonder how it might taste....

So excited to get an early read of this.

Fascinating premise, good execution and morally grey characters that are simply surviving. It's like Gilead meets True Blood.

Horror and fantasy and maybe sci fi all come together here for what I can say is an actually unique story. The duality of the humanoid beings that populate the story is interesting. Knowledge without nuance and interpretation isn't intellect; but a sum of experiences isn't a whole person either. And the idea of how we view the world being limited to what we can view of the world and what we believe as truth bc it is what we can see/touch is a concept that needed more time to unfold. Because while this seems to be explored more towards the end but doesn't fully expand beyond being remarked on by two characters. That and the looming question of origin is only what it's not a 5 star read for me

Recommended.

They look like us. They live among us, but they are not us. Book Eaters live secluded in four families. While her brothers grew up eating stories of adventure and preparing to run The Family one day, Devon was fed fairy tales and prepped for being a wife and birth mother. having children is difficult for member of The Family, and girls are a rarity. When they take her daughter from her and banish her son, who was born a “dragon,” a brain eater instead of a book eater, Devon will do whatever she has to in order to keep her son safe and away from those who would hurt and exploit him.

If you’re looking for a very new twist on vampires, definitely check this one out. For anyone who has ever devoured a book, loving it so much they actually want to eat it, this story will captivate you. It’s the raw story of a mother who would do anything for her children, even at the expense of her own sanity and livelihood. I consumed it at a rapid pace and loved Devon’s metamorphosis from innocent child to pawn in a man’s game to a ruthless mother who refused to take garbage from anyone. It’s a journey many girls and women take, though hopefully with less blood.

This one is out now wherever you get your books and audiobooks.

DNF @ 15%

I just can't keep trying with this one, so it's going to be dnfed. I just have a hard time caring about the characters, I feel like if we maybe had more characterization idk, I just don't care and when that happens with a book it's very difficult for me to want to keep reading.

I also thought I was going to like the premise of book-eating people, but no. This is the type of fantasy with very little worldbuilding, and the little we have it's just so confusing. I was confused by the explanations of these humanoid creatures that eat books (I mean it's a great concept) but then there is mind-eating people and they eat brains??? Oh no. This book really lost me there, with it being sort of a secret society living with their own rules and these regulating people that are like dragon-ish mind-eating people I was like??? So damn confused.

I thought I would end up powering through more of this book, but it turns out I really don't want to. There is nothing appealing to me here, not the writing, not the characters, not the plot, not the fantastical elements, nothing. This is a big no from me, maybe it'll work for other people but I just found it extremely underwhelming.

Imaginative and unique, this book had all the right cues for me.

Oddly enough, I felt it just didn't deliver. The characters (outside of Dev) felt like mere brushstrokes... especially compared to the depth put into Dev and her story!

Too, I felt like there were too many questions left unanswered or taken on faith for the Bookeater people. It almost felt like Dean was going for a scientific "this could happen", but left it without explaination.

I also didn't love the ending, or the lead to, I assume, the next book. While the world and its concepts were unique, something big woukd have to be revealed to make me read a second installment.

That said, still enjoyable, though it felt Looong for such a short book.

My thanks to Edelweiss+ for the free ARC in exchange for a fair review.

Despite loving the premise of The Book Eaters (dark urban fantasy/horror with a lesbian mc?? hell yeah) I couldn't fully get into it.

I think I went into it expecting full horror galore while instead it's more of a literary horror with not-quite-gothic-but-still-atmospheric dark elements reminiscent of twisted fairy-tale retellings. So, not bad at all, just not quite was I anticipating.

Here's what it is about: family bonds, co-dependency, generational trauma, motherhood, betrayals, and resilience. The lesbian element does come into play but it's more an exploration of identity and society's expectations than a fully fleshed romantic subplot. Again, not bad at all.

I think the Family system was well explained, and I liked the many parallels and nods to Arthurian legends and fairytale lore. But if I have to be honest, I couldn't sympathize with the mc and I found myself caring more about Cai's struggles than Devon's, although they are still connected. Perhaps I would have liked it more if the book had been written by Cai's point-of-view, but at that point it would have probably lost most of its feminist commentary and therefore have been a very different book.

Overall a good book with a variety of interesting elements and pacing-just not for me.

Thank you Netgalley and Tor Books for sending me a digital ARC of this book in return for my honest thoughts.