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nickynarrates 's review for:
Tender Is the Flesh
by Agustina Bazterrica
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Caveat - it took me 4 months to stomach reading this book in full, start to finish. Yet ★★★★★
A book so disturbing you’ll abandon snacks, pause for months at a time, and realise you physically cannot read it while eating - which is saying something, because reading while snacking is usually the dream.
The premise is brutal: after a virus renders all animal meat toxic, society legalises and normalises the consumption of human flesh. The new industry is slick, bureaucratic, corrupt and disturbingly accepted. Marcos, the protagonist, works in a processing plant. He’s emotionally numb, privately disgusted, yet complicit - a man caught in the machine but not quite of it. Until he’s gifted a woman bred for slaughter. And everything shifts.
Bazterrica’s world-building is nauseatingly complete. From the Church of the Imolation to government-approved slaughterhouses, private hunting reserves to genetic experimentation labs, there is no part of society left untouched. Just when you think it can’t get more horrific - it does. Doctor Valka’s lab is the most sickening example: cold, clinical, and designed to destroy any lingering sense of hope or humanity. It’s the final gut-turning layer in a world already rotting from the inside out.
The writing? Stark, poetic, and dark. There’s an eerie precision to every sentence - no excess, no flourish. Just clean incisions that bleed meaning. Bazterrica doesn’t embellish the horror; she embeds it - visceral, relentless, and always escalating. It crawls under your skin and stays there. The book isn’t gory for the sake of shock. It’s methodical, designed to strip you of any numbed illusions.
This novel works as metaphor as much as it does as fiction. It’s a scathing critique of capitalism, consumerism, institutional violence, the dehumanising language of systems, and the moral contortions we perform to preserve comfort. It asks what happens when people become products and how quickly we adapt when that change is given a legal name and a neutral tone.
The emotional arc of reading it is as intense as the content itself. You start with fascination. Then recoil - WHAT am I reading? Then reflect - what is this saying about us? Then, just as you find something to hold on to… the ending shatters you.
That ending. Cold. Quiet. Unforgivable. It reveals the truth the whole book has been building toward: no one resists forever. Complicity isn’t a switch - it’s a slow bleed.
It took me four months to finish. Not because I didn’t want to - but because my body literally needed breaks. The story was too rich, too revolting, too real to be read in one sitting. This isn’t just a dystopia. It’s a moral reckoning.
Tender is the Flesh is the most disturbing thing I’ve ever given five stars to - and I’ll never ever forget it.
You’ll love this if… you like your dystopia marbled with moral decay and served cold with a side of existential dread.
A book so disturbing you’ll abandon snacks, pause for months at a time, and realise you physically cannot read it while eating - which is saying something, because reading while snacking is usually the dream.
The premise is brutal: after a virus renders all animal meat toxic, society legalises and normalises the consumption of human flesh. The new industry is slick, bureaucratic, corrupt and disturbingly accepted. Marcos, the protagonist, works in a processing plant. He’s emotionally numb, privately disgusted, yet complicit - a man caught in the machine but not quite of it. Until he’s gifted a woman bred for slaughter. And everything shifts.
Bazterrica’s world-building is nauseatingly complete. From the Church of the Imolation to government-approved slaughterhouses, private hunting reserves to genetic experimentation labs, there is no part of society left untouched. Just when you think it can’t get more horrific - it does. Doctor Valka’s lab is the most sickening example: cold, clinical, and designed to destroy any lingering sense of hope or humanity. It’s the final gut-turning layer in a world already rotting from the inside out.
The writing? Stark, poetic, and dark. There’s an eerie precision to every sentence - no excess, no flourish. Just clean incisions that bleed meaning. Bazterrica doesn’t embellish the horror; she embeds it - visceral, relentless, and always escalating. It crawls under your skin and stays there. The book isn’t gory for the sake of shock. It’s methodical, designed to strip you of any numbed illusions.
This novel works as metaphor as much as it does as fiction. It’s a scathing critique of capitalism, consumerism, institutional violence, the dehumanising language of systems, and the moral contortions we perform to preserve comfort. It asks what happens when people become products and how quickly we adapt when that change is given a legal name and a neutral tone.
The emotional arc of reading it is as intense as the content itself. You start with fascination. Then recoil - WHAT am I reading? Then reflect - what is this saying about us? Then, just as you find something to hold on to… the ending shatters you.
That ending. Cold. Quiet. Unforgivable. It reveals the truth the whole book has been building toward: no one resists forever. Complicity isn’t a switch - it’s a slow bleed.
It took me four months to finish. Not because I didn’t want to - but because my body literally needed breaks. The story was too rich, too revolting, too real to be read in one sitting. This isn’t just a dystopia. It’s a moral reckoning.
Tender is the Flesh is the most disturbing thing I’ve ever given five stars to - and I’ll never ever forget it.
You’ll love this if… you like your dystopia marbled with moral decay and served cold with a side of existential dread.