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sashendry 's review for:
The Book Eaters
by Sunyi Dean
The concepts here were so good but the execution let me down. I loved the idea of people who eat books and consume knowledge, and their fellows who straight up eat minds. I loved a main character who was a mother doing everything for her children. The emotions were well-written and grounded the book for me. The queer romance was sweet (but could've been way more developed).
The plot let me down. It meandered around and spent time in places that felt unnecessary, and the pacing somehow took away from the horrifying themes of ownership and monstrosity and being raised on lies.
I also found the modern-day setting jarring, and it introduced several plot holes. These ancient families of book eaters were clearly Victorian-esque in their highly structured society and old ideas about marriage for reproduction and I think would've worked just as well if the entire setting had simply been older. But the setting was the modern day, with video games and the like. Which caused believability issues e.g. apparently book eaters are cursed with never being able to write anything..... except they can type in alarm codes on security systems. So why can't they just... type other things? Why aren't they fully incorporating voice-to-text software in everything they do?
The plot let me down. It meandered around and spent time in places that felt unnecessary, and the pacing somehow took away from the horrifying themes of ownership and monstrosity and being raised on lies.
I also found the modern-day setting jarring, and it introduced several plot holes. These ancient families of book eaters were clearly Victorian-esque in their highly structured society and old ideas about marriage for reproduction and I think would've worked just as well if the entire setting had simply been older. But the setting was the modern day, with video games and the like. Which caused believability issues e.g. apparently book eaters are cursed with never being able to write anything..... except they can type in alarm codes on security systems. So why can't they just... type other things? Why aren't they fully incorporating voice-to-text software in everything they do?