It has been some time since I have truly devoured a book, reading it in only a few days (I’m pretty sure the last time this happened was with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo). Ironically, Sunyi Dean’s The Book Eaters managed to be the delicacy I’ve been searching for in a sea of recently mediocre titles. In this book review, I’ll dive into the delicious gothic fantasy world of Sunyi Dean’s debut novel and explore what did and didn’t work throughout this novel about a mother’s unconditional love.
The Book Eaters spotlights Devon Fairweather, a 20-something trying to escape her past. The catch? Devon isn’t human. She is a part of a supernatural species called Book Eaters. You’ve probably guessed it, but Book Eaters eat books to survive. They also retain all of the information they consume, making them walking, talking libraries. As a self-certified bookworm, eating books sounds like the dream. Book Eaters however are hiding a rather massive, and dark, secret. There’s a secondary breed of Book Eaters called Mind Eaters who eat human memories instead of literature. One of the seven Book Eater families of Great Britain manages to develop a “cure” aptly named Redemption for Mind Eaters that allows them to eat books instead of minds. But, out of the blue, the entire family and their cure disappear. This leaves the Mind Eaters in chaos and Devon on the run with her 5-year-old son, a Mind Eater who desperately needs his antidote.
I have a standard blue-print in my head when I think of fantasy–dragons, knights, princesses, the works. Sunyi Dean completely turned that concept on its head while cheekily paying homage to the traditions (and patriarchy) of fantastical tales. Her story manages to contain dragons, knights, and princesses without recycling the overdone tropes. Dean’s Dragons are adult Mind Eaters. Her Knights are a group of male Book Eaters who tame and use the Mind Eaters as weapons when necessary. Female Book Eaters are Dean’s Princesses, rare, docile, and naive women force-fed (quite literally) fairy tales and Victorian romances to prepare them for their lives as “perfect” wives.
In a sense, Devon is the princess that escapes the castle. She is quickly disenchanted by the world she was raised in when she is forcibly separated from her firstborn daughter and sent back to her home to be married off to a new male Book Eater from another family. When she has her second child, she makes it her mission to escape to Ireland with him. As someone who is obsessed with the good, the bad, and the ugly of Irish history I couldn’t help but wonder if Dean knew the dark past of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries where unwed mothers were sent to have their children and then frequently separated from them through forced adoptions. It felt like sending Devon and her son to Ireland was an attempt, albeit fictional, redemption for a country with a parallel past, but I can’t seem to find anything online proving it. Sunyi Dean, if you ever read this I would love to know!
For a book that only has 295 pages inside, Sunyi Dean packed so much information in through her artful use. of flashbacks. While a tried-and-true technique, flashing back and forward in time can create more confusion than clarity in a novel. Dean is meticulous in her use of the technique, making sure that every flashback chapter purposefully answers a question from present-day chapters before it. The flow was, for lack of a better term, *chef’s kiss*.
I could praise this book for another 500 words at least, but to keep this review somewhat objective, I have to point out a few flows in Dean’s work. Knowing that this is a standalone novel, I really wish there had been more focus on what happened to Devon’s daughter. As a fellow oldest daughter, I was jilted by the fact that she was left to fend for herself without only occasional mentions after her story was told. I also wish we learned more about the ingredients in Redemption. Getting our hands on Redemption and its recipes is the entire premise of the story and yet we never find out what it contains.
Those two plotholes are insignificant in the grand scheme of this gory and haunting novel and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in exploring the ambiguous nature of love and the horrors that can come from a repressive society that is unwilling to change. With that, I would love to leave you with my favorite quote from this novel,
Love doesn’t have a cost. It’s just a choice you make, the way you choose to keep breathing or keep living. It’s not about worth and it’s not about price. Those concepts don’t apply.
Sunyi Dean, The Book Eaters
Erica’s Experience
Title: The Book Eaters
Author: Sunyi Dean
Genre: Dark Fantasy
Page Count: 295
Publication Date: August 2, 2022
The Book Nook Chronicles 
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