The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

Pages: 304

Publisher: Harper Voyager 

Released: 18th of August 2022 

Sunyi Dean's The Book Eaters is a contemporary fantasy debut. It's a story of motherhood, sacrifice, and hope; of queer identity and learning to accept who you are; of gilded lies and the danger of believing the narratives others create for you.

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. 

What I Have To Say 

I think I read this book at entirely the wrong time. It wasn't nice to read about women being treated poorly and being forced to have babies at a time when abortion laws were being passed to do precisely that. It just made me so tired with the state of the world. 

The other parts of the book were interesting though. I really liked the descriptions of the houses and the peek into book eater society that we saw. I wonder if maybe there could have been more viewpoints or a bit more time when Devon was ignorant of how bad it was, just to give us a bit of a break from the doom and gloom. I'd have liked to enjoy a world where books can be absorbed just by eating them and whole languages can be learned in a single bite but there was no time for that. 

Perhaps if I'd read this book at a different time of my life, I would have felt differently, but for now it was just not the book for me. 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Harper Voyager for providing me with this copy for review. 

 

Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 304

Publisher: Head of Zeus 

Released: 11th of April 2019 

1906: A large manor house, Wake's End, sits on the edge of a bleak Fen, just outside the town of Wakenhyrst. It is the home of Edmund Stearn and his family – a historian, scholar and land-owner, he's an upstanding member of the local community. But all is not well at Wake's End. Edmund dominates his family tyrannically, in particular daughter Maud. When Maud's mother dies in childbirth and she's left alone with her strict, disciplinarian father, Maud's isolation drives her to her father's study, where she happens upon his diary.

During a walk through the local church yard, Edmund spots an eye in the undergrowth. His terror is only briefly abated when he discovers its actually a painting, a 'doom', taken from the church. It's horrifying in its depiction of hell, and Edmund wants nothing more to do with it despite his historical significance. But the doom keeps returning to his mind. The stench of the Fen permeates the house, even with the windows closed. And when he lies awake at night, he hears a scratching sound – like claws on the wooden floor...

Wakenhyrst is a terrifying ghost story, an atmospheric slice of gothic, a brilliant exploration of the boundaries between the real and the supernatural, and a descent into the mind of a psychopath. 

What I Have to Say 

This book was everything I wanted it to be. It's a great mystery, full of obsession, madness, demons and all things creepy. Paver is a master at creating an atmosphere that pulls you completely into the scene and keeps you there in suspense, unable to put the book down. 

This book really delves into the dark sides of Christianity. It shows the madness and religious fervour that can be brought on by those who would use it as a form of control, but it also explores the nature of questioning the concept of Christianity. Whilst escaping from the control of her father and his version of religion, she also questions the mortality of it all. The idea that everyone is born in sin and have to redeem themselves. I really liked to see all her thoughts and explorations while escaping from the strict rules of her father's household. 

It was really interesting to see the study of the medieval fixation on the afterlife, the fixation on the punishment and demons in hell rather than the bright happy reward of heaven. This really is a fantastic look at the history of Christianity both medieval and during Maud's time. 

A damn good mystery focused on how things went down and what actually happened. 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Head of Zeus for providing me with this copy for review.

Naondel by Maria Turtschaninoff

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 480

Publisher: Pushkin Children's Books 

Released: 6th of April 2017 

In the opulent palace of Ohaddin, women have one purpose - to obey. Some were brought here as girls, captured and enslaved; some as servants; some as wives. All of them must do what the Master tells them, for he wields a deadly and secret power. But the women have powers too. One is a healer. One can control dreams. One is a warrior. One can see everything that is coming. In their golden prison, the women wait. They plan. They write down their stories. They dream of a refuge, a safe place where girls can be free. And, finally, when the moon glows red, they will have their revenge. 

Trigger Warning: Rape, Abuse, Suicide, Depression, Miscarriage 

What I Have to Say 

The first of these books was okay. It was a bit slow, but it had a fairly good story. I liked it enough to want to read more, especially since Naondel is more of a prequel, showing the women who founded the Red Abbey. I was looking forward to seeing their journey and how they voyaged across to find the island. But what I got was just a lot of rape. 

I don't mind reading about rape any more than I mind reading about murder or abuse. If it's important to the story and written in a way that doesn't glorify it, I'm okay with it. But this book just had so much of it. There were about three girls in the whole novel who weren't raped. It was awful and I didn't really want to read on. This is a book about the oppression of women. I knew that going in. But there are other ways to oppress women. I expected a bit of abuse. I thought there probably would be some sort of rape or forced marriage, but this was just too much. Turtshaninoff didn't bother thinking of any other ways of oppressing women. I expected a feminist book about women fighting against oppression, but I honestly don't think this was very feminist at all. 

I'd also been looking forward to seeing the women sailing across the sea, maybe a bit of them setting up the island and working out the rules. I got about a paragraph summarizing their journey. I'd have rather this paragraph have been extended and made up the bulk of the book. 

There are so many ways they could have shown this book without so much detail about the rapes. It didn't have to be the way it was. They could have glossed over it, faded to black. Anything so I didn't have to read it all. But they didn't and so I hated this book. 

My thanks go to Pushkin Press and Netgalley for providing me with this copy for review.