Reviews with content warning for Medical content - The Book Eaters

If you remember that era in the early 2000s where everyone was making zombie media but it wasn't really cool anymore, so they were all sort of ashamed about it and like, "well MY creatures aren't zombies because they [one random gimmick; it's a fungus or whatever]," even though they totally are zombies - this is that but with vampires.

Even at the end I was totally unclear on how book eating was supposed to work. The characters' homes are full of intact books and they have fangs so I assumed they drained the book's "essence" or something, but later a character is putting ketchup on one, or soaking it in water to make it easier to eat. Book eating is always sort of elided, which is kind of funny because mind eating (a sort of mutation that some book eaters have that requires them to eat brains) is so vividly described on multiple occasions.

The characters all sound the same and half the book is characters describing events that have already happened to each other, so there isn't much suspense until right at the end. There is one problem that hangs over the characters for most of the runtime but then is IMMEDIATELY solved the second it actually comes up, which felt kind of pointless.

The romance is terrible; the characters barely talk and suddenly the kid is calling them girlfriends. This woman is the only one the main character really interacts with, which is sort of weird for a book billing itself as feminist. She looks at most other women with either pity or scorn. There is an extremely weird chapter where characters quote the dictionary definition of asexuality at each other that ends up being almost insulting, and the "I ruined a baby with my son's Autism Beam" bit was ridiculous.

I have no idea what the book was trying to say: parental love can be self destructive? Fairy tales destroy the imagination? The author really likes Tomb Raider and needs to make sure we know it?

Content Warnings

thesapphiccelticbookworm's review

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Content Warnings

purplepenning's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

I don't usually do horror or horror-adjacent and I literally just finished reading it on a dark and stormy night when I still have a touch of fever, so I need a beat before crafting a real review. It's undoubtedly fascinating, though! And the writing is lush but not overly so.

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caseythereader's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Thanks to Tor Books for the free advance copy of this book.

- THE BOOK EATERS is part adventure tale, part gothic mystery, part horror story and I loved it.
- I loved that it not only gave us the gothic manor tropes but also the claustrophobia of being a woman born into an impossibly patriarchal system. Watching Devon try to navigate her love for her children with her need to break free and be her own person was heart wrenching.
- It's not super obvious from the summary, but this book is also queer! There's some nice sapphic longing from Devon, as well as an asexual secondary character.

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