the book eaters by sunyi dean

i received a copy of the book eaters from harper collins nz in exchange for an honest review.

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star rating

★★★

the book eaters review

the book eaters is one of those books that i had high expectations for, but unfortunately it fell short. this book was nothing like it was advertised it would be.

the biggest selling point of this book is that the characters literally eat books. however, this was proven to be a minor thing that doesn’t really play that big of a role. while it was very unique, i wish it played a bigger part. the general premise of the book was very original.

the history and the worldbuilding was fun and creative. the book eaters relies on a heavily misogynistic world where the population is dwindling and women reach menopause earlier. (because of this, the women are carted around to different marriages trying reproduce before their ‘time is up’). generally, reading about misogyny isn’t fun, but i enjoyed how different this was to a lot of other books.

one of my biggest struggles while reading this book is the setting. the language and environment (their houses and style of dress) leads you to believe you’re reading a victorian set book. the author then goes on to mention things like video games and cell phones. i kept getting thrown out of the story as these things didn’t feel like they belonged together.

i also really struggled with relating to the characters. no one was particularly memorable, and i didn’t care what happened to them. i really struggled with kai (our main characters son), who is a mind eater (he essentially eats a persons knowledge and personality). he often spoke and acted like an adult, while still being a young child. i can’t remember his exact age, but assuming he’s five and acting like a 40 year old is quite off putting. i kept forgetting that he was still a child.

on a similar note, the plot was non stop but i found i didn’t care what happened. i felt like i was reading a history textbook detailing a list of events rather than actually getting into it.

for the most part, the pacing was medium-slow. i found the writing style to be very clunky and didn’t flow nicely. the climax was very fast paced, everything being concluded in less than 11 pages. it was weird as i was nearing the end of the book, i was asking “when’s the climax going to happen? have i already missed it?”. but it did. it was just very brief.

overall, i really enjoyed the originality of this book but there was a lot that still needed fixing in order to make it a truly enjoyable book.

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