Welcome to this special post about The Book Eaters! As an avid reader and book enthusiast, the title is the first and foremost thing that drew me to The Book Eaters. The cover captured my imagination and the synopsis piqued my interest. I was definitely curious about the life of book eaters and how books helped them in life but what I wasn’t prepared for was the depth of this story about a secret group of humanoid species who live among humans. In this post, I share my thoughts and SK and I discuss the book. 🙂 But first, The Book Eaters:
The Book EatersÂ
By Sunyi Dean | Goodreads
Read: October 14-18
Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book’s content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.
Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon—like all other book eater women—is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairytales and cautionary stories.
But real life doesn’t always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger—not for books, but for human minds.
Content notes include violence, domestic abuse, pregnancy (childbirth), child abuse, rape (off-page).
The Book Eaters: My thoughts
Told in two timelines that eventually converge on present day, the main character and narrator is Dev. She was born to the house of Fairweather, one of the Six Families of Book Eaters. She is a princess as girls are rare in the Families and the few that exist, can only reproduce upto two times. That is the crux of the family structures and societal complications. In the present time, Devon is on the run with her five year old son, Cai. In the past, going back to her childhood days when she first met a human, Devon doesn’t yet know what being a princess entails.
Numerous fairy tales and fantasy novels depict the purpose of a woman to produce hiers, keep the family line going. The fairy tales are exactly the stories that Devon has grown up with, but she has a spark, and sometimes, she escapes into the forbidden worlds of Jane Eyre. Sometimes she reads books rather than eating them. As she grows older, she starts to curate her diet beyond what the Family had exposed her to. For her survival she turns to spy novels while romance novels give her solace and pleasure.
Devon doesn’t know until it’s too late that she signed a contract automatically by being born a girl. In the book eaters society, a girl marries as many times as she can bear children. To keep the family lines as separate and diverse as possible, there is a special group of individuals called knights that exists to coordinate such marriage alliances and see them through. No two marriages are with the same Family. Once the baby turns three, the mother is relieved of her duty and has to move on to her next marriage, should she still be able to reproduce, or back to the original Family. Devon learns the hard way that no matter how much she loves her child, she cannot be with her because the Family won’t let her. No individuals’ promise or help is enough to keep them together in the current way of things.
And then there are mind eaters, another oppressed group in the book eaters society. When Cai is born a mind eater, he is the catalyst for Devon to make the change she wants – A journey to break free of Family rules, taking advantage of the internal Family feuds that have erupted and forming alliances that were unthinkable. The Book Eaters is a face paced, getaway style, spy mission kind of novel. It is also a coming of age story. It has aliens, a secret society, a dark look at marriages, the taboos of mind eating, the way societal roles change us all and, most importantly, a female book eater’s wish to be with her children.
I loved reading the two alternating timelines and trying to decipher how past Devon became present Devon. So much happened and the succinctness with which Sunyi Dean delivers the story is heartbreaking, memorable and breathtaking. I fell into a book that I didn’t want to come out of until I had finished.Â
I absolutely loved The Book Eaters. It captivated me in unexpectedly good ways. Rather than me going on endlessly about it, I am excited to welcome SK on the blog today to discuss the book with me. Let’s hear from her!
The Book Eaters: A Book Discussion
SK, welcome! 🙂 What made you pick up The Book Eaters?Â
So I’m actually in a reading Discord with Sunyi, and my interactions with her have always been interesting. Of course, her book title and premise caught my eye too, so it was a no-brainer for me to pick this book up! I absolutely loved it, so I’m really excited to have a chance to chat with you about it!
Did you have any expectations about the story going in? I was blown away by the mix of fantasy, societal commentary and suspense!
I had very few expectations, really. I knew the general gist of book-eaters/mind-eaters but I didn’t know anything about the themes or the mood/tone of the story. It captured me right away though, even though I wasn’t prepared for the contemporary storyline–I had expected more of the earlier storyline. However, the way she wove the two together completely blew me away. Absolute mastery of a dual timeline, I think!
The social commentary really resonated with me, and the horror and suspense elements really worked for me. Sometimes that can be hit-or-miss for me, but they were woven so deftly into the plot and worldbuilding that it seemed a natural extension of what was going on, rather than feeling artificial.
The Family structure had lots of aunts and uncles, no true father/mother figure. How did this affect the events that transpired?
The family structure of the book eaters was fascinating, and also seeded a kernel of disquiet in me that grew over time as my worries were brought to light. The idea of the mothers simply being like breeding mares and not really a part of the family at all but passed from one family to another to give children was truly awful. Poor Devon’s realization that her princess childhood was a poor attempt to paper over this ugly reality she’d face as an adult made an impact, even though I could see it coming, see it growing. Her reactions to this knowledge and her fighting spirit really endeared me to her, even though she’s such a dark figure.
What did you think about the role of women in The Book Eaters? Through Devon we got a first-hand look at their lives from a young child to adult and through the aunts, it is possible to speculate on what happens after the child bearing is done. Until we met Vic and Hester, book eaters women looked like people who had resigned to their fate of bringing up the family’s children.
For me, the indoctrination came through loud and clear. This is their way of life and the aunts don’t seem to fight it much–which makes a certain amount of sense given that it’s so difficult for them to have children and their population is heading for extinction. It’s one of those things where I can see their reasoning and still vehemently disagree with their way of life. Instead, they tell Devon to just let it happen and then she gets her life again–albeit in a gilded cage. I can’t imagine raising my kids for a couple short years and then leaving them behind. I was fully on-board for Devon to bring the system crashing down as a result. It’s a story of survival and the costs of escaping a cult-like background. How far will Devon go to live free with her child, and what will those lengths cost her?
I particularly enjoyed Devon and Ramsey’s history and work together. Of all of Dev’s brothers, Ramsey is the one she is closest to. He is also the teacher of one of her first dark lessons of being a book eater – as a girl, those around her will be published for her mistakes. What did you think of the cast of characters that we met through this book?
Poor Ramsey! He’s such a tragic figure. They were so close growing up, but because Devon, as a princess, didn’t get punished, Ramsey took on her punishment for daring to be a curious, wild child. And then, with such punishments and abuse, Ramsey embraced the teachings he was flooded with–a reality that happens again and again. It was absolutely tragic, and the effect on Devon was really well shown I think.
I really loved the friend she made while playing video games, Jarrow. He really made an impact on me, with his kindness while both were trapped in a horrible situation, offering each other what little comfort they could and building a budding friendship as a result.
Though Devon always had agency and zeal, motherhood changed her. Did you find yourself changed by motherhood too?
Oh absolutely. In many ways I’m the same person, just as Devon retains her agency and zeal, but the focus for me shifted, just as her focus shifted. Rather than “what can I get away with to bring myself some much needed joy” she poured herself into rescuing her children. This is probably a big part of why the book resonates so much for me, with the sobering question of how far would you go to save your children? My kids are always a huge factor in my decisions, from deciding mundane things like “what are we eating this week” to “how do I want to spend the weekend” etc. I’m grateful I don’t have a mindeater’s wellbeing to juggle too–simply trying to give my kids the best chances for a fulfilling life in the world that I can give them is hard enough!
Why do you think the Families had such a poor view of mind eaters? To me it felt like one of those scenarios where free will was taken away and it was automatically assumed that a person with this trait was a bad person.Â
I think they were terrified of mind eaters. Mind eaters are difficult to control, and the whole of the Families are built on control: whether that’s “obey or something bad will happen to your brother” or lies spun until the truth drops on Devon’s head, shocking her that what she trusted isn’t to be so at all. With a mind eater, how do you control them and how do you keep them safe?
Well, we know how they control them–it’s in the book. But I think all that, that fear, that subsequent vilification, made it shocking for the society that Devon would ever risk anything to keep a mind eater alive, even if he’s her child, because he’s a monster. And we see that she is a little afraid of him, but she loves him so, so much and wants the best for him, enough to go to any lengths to help him. That’s really compelling for me.
I found the world building to be phenomenal in this book! Each Family co-existed with humans and their technology in their unique way. With Devon’s travels, I loved being exposed to how different the Families were. The possibility to use IVF treatment and solve the problem of fewer and fewer book eaters as well as how the book eaters thrived without being able to write was intriguing to read about. What did you think of these aspects of the story?Â
I thought it was a brilliant way to knit the book eaters fully into the fabric of a contemporary society, since none of us are an island (even if we’re book eaters trying to be secret about our existence). Seeing the ways the book eaters used the humans answered questions I wasn’t even sure I had, lol. The mix of treating humans as a resource along with trying to remain mostly hidden from society as a whole was interesting, and the inclusion of human trafficking was dark but fit the theme and mood of the story so well, because the society uses people so much in so many different ways.
Book eaters might not credit themselves for being creative but I felt like that was just another narrative pushed onto them rather than one they truly embodied. Devon, Jarrow, Hester, Vic, are all amazing examples of individuals who have stepped up.
Oh absolutely. I think they tied themselves to what they consumed and the indoctrination a ton (and I think those two things were linked for a reason). I did think it was interesting about connecting creativity so strongly to writing and drawing, so I don’t think they were prepared to see Devon’s creativity in even simply not accepting the life set out for her and her son.
But when pushed to the edge, they found a way through. I did think it was refreshing that creativity was something they longed for more of but didn’t see in themselves–probably because I read so many books where the main character is clever and creative in their solutions.
Have you read The Book Eaters or is it on your TBR? If you have posted a review (or whenever you do!), feel free to link to it in the comments! We would love to know what you thought. 🙂
Head to the buddy reads page to find other detailed book discussions!
Cover Photo on Unsplash
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