Thursday, December 1, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

 



The Book Eaters is the debut novel from author Sunyi Dean, which takes place in Northern Britain (Dean is currently based in the UK, although she was born in Texas and grew up in Hong Kong per her bio).  The story features a novel take on vampire-like beings, families of Book Eaters who feed literally on books, learning from the content that they eat, but who are unable physiologically to write/type language on their own, even as they're fully functional in all other ways.  There are also a variant for of this race, the Mind Eaters, who can write but must consume the minds of other beings in order to survive, taking their personalities and memories into themselves...unless they subsist instead off a chemically created drug.  Like Vampires in other stories, the Book Eaters live in families that keep to themselves with their own practical rules, rules that are designed to ensure the continued health of the families and the further propagation of their species, something made more difficult by their species' low fertility and low rate of having females.  Dean uses this setup to create a story around a Book Eater mother and her Mind Eater son who are on the run, jumping back between the mother's past and her flight in the present, as she finds herself constantly trapped by Book Eater gender rules and discipline.  


The result is a story that's generally really well done, and is incredibly compelling as it slowly reveals itself in both timelines, featuring LGBTQ characters, themes of love and motherhood and family, and a really enjoyable interesting setup about what really makes someone a monster.  The story does have some issues with its ending, with the ending resolving everything really easily and abruptly after a long tense setup, but it works thanks to the story's really great lead character in Devon, who you will root for incredibly, and the story also hits some horror beats along the way as well, including in that ending, which stun in their own way.  It's a story that's well worth your time, and one that makes me excited to see more from Dean in the future, as she's created some really excellent characters and world here.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Present Day: Devon is on the run, living only with her son Cai, all while in hiding from the Book Eater Families and their enforcers, the Knights.  This would be almost impossible normally, but it's made even more impossible by the fact that Cai is a mind-eater, needing to consume the minds of humans in order to survive, meaning that Devon is forced to find poor possibly disposable humans for him to feed on and then dispose of.  

Devon's only possible solution is to find the Ravenscar family, a family of Book Eaters who discovered a chemical solution called Redemption to replace the Mind Eaters' need to feed.  Unfortunately, the Ravenscar family had an internal coup years ago and disappeared....but Devon's only hope is to find them before the Knights find her.  Yet even if Devon does manage to find them, it might not be enough, for the secrets of Devon's past are catching up to her and Cai, and threaten to trap her once more....

Years Ago: Devon grew up a rarity, a girl-child in the Book Eater families, whose low reproduction rate and low rate of birthing girls has resulted in strict gender roles: Boys grow up to lead the families or be given to the Knights, while Girls are married off twice to reproduce with other families, so as to ensure the continuation of their race.  And while IVF and technology from humans promises the potential end of that order, it isn't there yet in time for Devon, who finds herself married off and giving birth accordingly.  But Devon finds herself unwilling to comply with the Families and to separate herself from her child, and soon begins to face dire punishments for her misbehavior....punishments which temporarily force her into compliance....until her second marriage pushes her past the limits and into dire action....
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The Book Eaters near-entirely follows the perspective of Devon, as it jumps back and forth in time to reveal aspects of Devon's past and how she got here alongside its telling of the present day story.  Devon's story fits in a society that is fascinating in how it marries some classical oppressive and misogynist gender dynamics of an insular society with changing technology in the new world.  Given their birth rates and their low birth rates of female children in general*, it's perhaps unsurprising that such a society would develop: from the perspective of the leaders of society, it is essential for their continuation that Book Eater women reproduce as much as possible (usually twice) before they become infertile at a young age, as expected, and so the idea that women's bodies would be controlled and that the raising of babies would be taken away from them is plausible to have developed, and forms a very understandable, if horrifying background to this setting.

*The idea of non-Cis Book Eaters is never broached, which is perhaps unsurprising given how important the issue is of their sex organs, although non-hetero and ace book eaters do exist and are very important to this story*

But by their nature, Book Eaters consume books and the written word, and so they understand the potentials of  technology and are aware of the outside world.  On a Macro level, that means they're aware of the potentials of IVF and other means to possibly fix their fertility issues.  On a micro level, that means someone like Devon, a woman caught up in this system, is on some level aware of the fact that humans live in other ways, and how there are stories out there of women loving women, of being princesses with autonomy, and of taking their own journeys in their own hands.  And so, even as Devon is repeatedly browbeaten and blackmailed into trying to remain in line in the past, there always is that whisper in her head to refuse and to try to find her own path, even as that seems impossible.  It's a whisper that's nursed by a few great side characters Devon meets, most notably a geeky Ace Book Eater who is an outcast for his love of his own sister and his refusal to be interested in sex/reproducing, who give her hope in the past day of an escape and a woman named Hester in the present day, who presents a possible future for Devon, as Devon's interests lie in women rather than men.  

The result is a story of a woman fighting for herself and for her child(ren) against a system that presents her with very little chance of what she herself wants, and pushes forward anyway.  Devon's drive to get an escape for her and her son works incredibly well, as does her pathos, and the story is incredibly compelling the whole ride through.  And there's the interesting stuff that the book does around her story with the setting that I haven't really mentioned, like how the book eaters are physiologically unable to write or type and have to work around that fact or how the mind eaters' minds become muddled with the personalities of all those they consume, making it hard for their loved ones when their personalities shift upon taking in someone so contrary to whom they were before...presenting even more urgency for Devon to find the Redemption drug to save the mind of her son.  

It's a fascinating tale dealing with issues of motherhood, of gender and societal roles, of the roles of reproduction and technology in society, and of personal choice, and it's really generally done very well.  The book's ending is probably its weakest bit, as a bunch of potential conflicts all wind up wrapped up with a tight bow all incredibly abruptly, without much of the potential problems that are teased coming into play.  And it does tease a potential sequel hook as well.  But overall it's very satisfying and I do really recommend the Book Eaters as an excellent first novel and one that marks Dean as a writer to watch.  

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