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A review by bookph1le
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
1.0
One star not because I thought the book was bad, but because I didn't personally like it. Spoilers behind the tags, so read at your own risk.
Where the book failed for me was with this: I think it wants the reader to grapple with really uncomfortable issues, and while I appreciated that it didn't try to pretty anything up, I ultimately could not find a way to be on the characters' side.
Because of this, I never really connected with any of the characters. I was sympathetic with the plight Devon was going through as a mother, but I didn't like her. That normally wouldn't be a problem, but in this case it was a major issue. I also did not like Cai. I had a lot of sympathy for Amarinder and Hester, but neither of them are all that developed, which prevented me from connecting with this book. Had it been told from either of their perspectives, I think my reaction to it would have been very different--particularly with regard to Hester.
I think my other big quibble with this book is the premise. We're told some being--possibly of extraterrestrial origin--named the Collector created the book eaters and even the mind eaters. And that's it. There's no insight into what might have driven the Collector to create them, nor any real indication of what purpose they were meant to serve. The book kind of throws out a suggestion of what the Collector might have been after, but if the book didn't intend to really do anything with this aspect, I don't know why it was there. Why not just make the book eaters and the mind eaters beings that simply exist because they do?
All in all, this was disappointing.
Where the book failed for me was with this: I think it wants the reader to grapple with really uncomfortable issues, and while I appreciated that it didn't try to pretty anything up, I ultimately could not find a way to be on the characters' side.
Because of this, I never really connected with any of the characters. I was sympathetic with the plight Devon was going through as a mother, but I didn't like her. That normally wouldn't be a problem, but in this case it was a major issue. I also did not like Cai.
Spoiler
The reason I didn't like either of them boils down to this: to me Cai was a monster, and Devon was the person enabling that monster. Cai wasn't to blame for how he was born, but there was no way I could sympathize with a character who needed to eat human brains and did so repeatedly throughout the book. Maybe this could have worked if the brains he'd eaten belonged solely to bad people--though even then I couldn't see myself having any more sympathy for him--but it definitely lost me when he was preying on innocents. And while I can appreciate the fact that Cai is Devon's child, because she enables his feeds by procuring his victims for him, I could not get on her side, despite that I had ample reason to be in her corner, given how horrible her upbringing was.Spoiler
Really, she's one of the most compelling characters in the book. She can no more help how she was born than Cai can, but she elects to maim herself so that she can't act according to her nature, and not developing her more was a sorely missed opportunity, in my opinion.I think my other big quibble with this book is the premise. We're told some being--possibly of extraterrestrial origin--named the Collector created the book eaters and even the mind eaters. And that's it. There's no insight into what might have driven the Collector to create them, nor any real indication of what purpose they were meant to serve. The book kind of throws out a suggestion of what the Collector might have been after, but if the book didn't intend to really do anything with this aspect, I don't know why it was there. Why not just make the book eaters and the mind eaters beings that simply exist because they do?
All in all, this was disappointing.