Reviews tagging 'Acephobia/Arophobia'

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

34 reviews

superiour_medium's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

A delightfully dark and often disturbing aversion of a vampire story. All of the horror of a vampiric life but without the broad Gothic romance, but instead a very ground-level look at a mother son duo.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror and Alcohol

Moderate: Cursing, Toxic relationship, and Cannibalism

Minor: Confinement and Acephobia/Arophobia

daffodilcherry's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

A book about monsterous love and burning down the whole damn system. It took me until about a quarter of the way through the book to really get hooked, and then I devoured the rest of the book. I loved the development of Devon & Cai's relationship, their gradual understanding. I especially loved the worldbuilding of the 'eaters, and the different relationships between the cast.
Wheelhouse items: monsterous love, mother-child relationship, secret society, immersive worldbuilding, butch lesbians, chaos lesbians, burning the whole system down, fairytale subversion. 
Content warning explanations:

Devon is coerced into relationships with older men for conception of children, one of which is outwardly physically violent towards her.
 Theme of forceful separation between mother & child is very prevalent.
The eaters either eat books or people's minds, many scenes showing mind eating done by the child character, including that of a baby. 
One of the 'eater families trafficks humans to work for them.
One of the villanous characters has religious delusions about mind eating.</Spoiler>

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Misogyny, Sexism, Violence, Religious bigotry, Murder, Abandonment, and Alcohol

Moderate: Trafficking

Minor: Acephobia/Arophobia

innastholiel's review

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Misogyny, Violence, and Alcohol

Moderate: Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Infertility, Rape, Sexual assault, Blood, Murder, and Abandonment

Minor: Confinement, Gun violence, Torture, Medical trauma, Acephobia/Arophobia, Pregnancy, and Injury/Injury detail

purplatypus's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Violence, and Alcohol

Moderate: Child abuse, Misogyny, Sexism, Blood, Murder, Pregnancy, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Child death, Cursing, Infertility, Trafficking, Acephobia/Arophobia, and Fire/Fire injury

sunnydale's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book succeeds as a gothic allegory exploring the ways both targeted abuse and impersonal violence are used to maintain an oppressive culture. If it were marketed primarily as an introspective novel about a woman's journey to free herself and her children from abuse, people might not be so disappointed that the SFF elements aren't at the forefront. I don't think the physiology and culture of the otherworldly race are underdeveloped, but they aren't emphasized. 

I wasn't disappointed by the focus on Devon's personal arc. I was, however, disappointed that the crucial parts of that arc happened almost entirely in the past. The present-day chapters feel like they're only there to build tension as you wait to figure out what led up to them—they don't carry the narrative weight of half the book, despite getting half the book's "screen time." Characters like Hester, Cai, and Killock are intriguing, and I wish they'd been given more depth. 

Overall, I found the worldbuilding compelling, and I'd be interested in revisiting the world to learn more about mind eaters in particular. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexism, Violence, Blood, Murder, Pregnancy, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child abuse, Gun violence, Slavery, Vomit, Abandonment, and Alcohol

Minor: Body shaming, Drug use, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, and Acephobia/Arophobia

Physical abuse specifics:

Matley chokes Devon until she passes out, and it takes her a long time to recover. This happens immediately after she gives birth to Cai. She is also pinned down when Matley and his guards arrive to take Cai away.

There is no explicit sexual content or description of sexual assault, although Devon's relations with her husbands are nonconsensual. A lot of discussion of Devon's children being taken away from her. Her children are also threatened with violence.

rainbowrachel's review against another edition

dark sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Misogyny, Trafficking, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Minor: Acephobia/Arophobia and Pregnancy

hailstorm3812's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I really liked the premise of this. The set up is really interesting and Devon is a very interesting character. The overarching themes and finale kinda fell apart in the last act for me. It felt like it need to be longer or the first in a series. But overall I enjoyed it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement and Misogyny

Moderate: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, and Sexual assault

Minor: Homophobia, Trafficking, Acephobia/Arophobia, and Pregnancy

leonormsousa's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

REP

lesbian MC, sapphic LI, asexual male SC, disabled Indian-British SC

QUOTE 

“For here was the thing that no fairy tale would ever admit, but that she understood in that moment: love was not inherently good.
Certainly, it could inspire goodness. She didn’t argue that. Poets would tell you that love was electricity in your veins that could light a room. That it was a river in your soul to lift you up and carry you away, or a fire inside the heart to keep you warm. Yet electricity could also fry, rivers could drown, and fires could burn; love could be destructive. Punishingly, fatally destructive.
And the other thing, the real bloody clincher of it all, was that the good and the bad didn’t get served up equally. If love were a balance of electric lights and electric jolts, two sides of an equally weighted coin, then fair enough. She could deal.
That wasn’t how it worked, though. Some love was just the bad, all the time: an endless parade of electrified bones and drowned lungs and hearts that burned to a cinder inside the cage of your chest.
And so she looked down at her son and loved him with the kind of twisted, complex feeling that came from having never wanted him in the first place; she loved him with bitterness, and she loved him with resignation. She loved him though she knew no good could ever come from such a bond." 

THINGS I ENJOYED 

• Sunyi Dean's writing is stunning (something I've confirmed in her two recent short stories), and I think I might read everything she puts out there
• So many great and strong passages! (I'm not one to annotate but this book made me want to)
• We love a book that doesn't shy away from talking about misogyny and oppressive societies
• How the author explored the topic of love, especially maternal love and how it can twist your moral boundaries (see the quote I included)
• The queer rep <3
• The concept of book and mind eaters was so interesting and original, and the chapter introductions with the lore really made the experience better
• It really stuck with me (it has been 4 months since I read and I not only think about it but almost feel like rereading it)
• The dual-timeline storytelling works so well

THINGS I DIDN'T ENJOY

• The ending was a bit too rushed and even almost “too easy”.
• Some details were given a lot of emphasis in the book but then ended up not playing any part at all, which felt a bit misleading and incoherent.

THINGS THAT I'VE SEEN CRITICISM ABOUT AND WHY I ACTUALLY LIKED THEM

• The world-building is limited - I think that the vagueness and unresolvedness of this book fitted it quite well. It's very rooted in Devon, so for me, it made sense that we didn't knew much about the book/mind eaters origin or lore (or other topics of the book in general) because she didn't knew it as well, either because she wasn't given that information as a woman or because it was not knowledge the book eater society had at the time.
• The abrupt ending - I actually like open endings and thought this one fitted the book well

READ IF YOU ENJOY

• creepy books with grey/dark characters
• stories about unhinged women trying to break free
• topics like misogynist societies and motherhood
• urban fantasy/sci-fi elements as a means to uncover and discuss real-life situations

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Violence, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Alcoholism, Body horror, Body shaming, Child death, Gore, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Cannibalism, Stalking, Murder, Pregnancy, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Homophobia, Slavery, Trafficking, and Acephobia/Arophobia

trickphoenix's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Misogyny, Sexism, Violence, Blood, Grief, Cannibalism, Murder, Pregnancy, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Rape, Sexual content, Abandonment, and Alcohol

Minor: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Trafficking, Car accident, Acephobia/Arophobia, and Fire/Fire injury

jswense's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book utterly consumed me. I listened to the audiobook in two days, and I didn’t want it to end. Sunyi Dean creates a vivid world of people who consume books to survive. The Book Eaters’ society is steeped in harsh traditions meant to protect the six families remaining in Britain. One of the greatest threats to the rigid hierarchy are children who have a craving for something much more sinister than the written word: the human mind.

When Devon gives birth to a mind eater she does not see a monster
but a child she will do anything to protect. Her attempts to shield her family
from the sinister world they were born into sends her on a journey across
Britain to find the producers of a drug that has the ability to save her son
from a life of mind eating. 

The Book Eaters is a thoughtful look at motherhood, family, and
what we will do for love. It asks the question; how do you survive when your
fairytale life turns out to be a nightmare?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gore, Sexism, Violence, Cannibalism, Murder, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Trafficking

Minor: Homophobia, Infertility, and Acephobia/Arophobia