Nine dark and disturbing tales, this was a pretty entertaining small collection found randomly as a freebie through Twitter of all things.
I’m not familiar with a small press that produced it, but they did a thoroughly professional job from cover to editing. Not familiar with the author, either, but he did a pretty decent job too. I enjoyed both the originality of concepts and the subtlety of the execution. But the latter, I mean, the author’s preference for psychological deviance as opposed to guts and gore approach the genre sometimes overrelies on. Overall, a quick fun read. Easily done in one sitting on a dark night in October.
0 Comments
If you’ve only read Lemire’s more recent work, it’s easy to only think of his as a writer. A very good one at that. But he started off producing books featuring his own art accompanying his writing and in an it’s-almost-unfair-how-talented-this-guy-is sort of way, he’s just as good of an artist as he is a writer. This book is a fine example of that.
The art here - stark ink lines and watercolors? – compliments the story perfectly. In fact, the way the color is used to stand out in the otherwise monochrome bluish tone of the narrative so perfectly matching North Canada where the story is set is very clever. The portraiture is expressive, just right for a story that’s a pure character driven drama. A story of a man w whose life is driven by inherited violence beat into him as a child. The violence that drives him first to a professional hockey career and later to a dead-end job and a Canada-sized drinking habit. It is only when his long lost sister shows up in town fleeing her abusive boyfriend, that the man is finally motivated to face down his demons and, perhaps, let go of them. So it’s a slice of life sort of tale; told right, drawn right. Dark but not hopeless, and compelling throughout. A large, gorgeous book with very good text to art ratio that makes for a quick and enjoyable read. Recommended. I love books about books. Any sort of bibliomystery or bibliowhatever and I’m there. So, naturally, this one piqued my interest. And turned out unlike any other book about books out there since this is a book about…eating books.
So what’s that…bibliophagia? Anyway, Book Eaters are a world onto themselves, an old world dynasty surviving in present day England by maintaining their backwards practices rigorously and ruthlessly. That is the world the protagonist, Devon, of this novel is born into and that is the world she spends the entire novel fleeing. Not just her, but her young son, who was born a deviation of his kind – a mind eater, a more dangerous variety that needs to kill to survive. And mommy Devon will kill to feed her baby, even other babies. Mother’s love and all that. Anyway, naturally Devon is chased and naturally there’s all sorts of intrigue and action, but mainly this book skates by on its original idea and the concomitant world building. These are people who EAT books. Imagine absorbing knowledge that way. And yet, the written word is quite beyond them – they cannot write. They live like a fairy tale, a dark one. The one where princesses are sacrificed for timeworn traditions. There are no happy princesses in this tale. But Devon, shedding her royal title, is determined to forge her own path in a world she lived besides and hardly knew. For her own sake and for the sake of her murderous baby boy. For the sake of trying to find a new (and improved) life. Meanwhile, in flashbacks we are told of courtly intrigue, Book Eater’s policies, and Devon’s life until now. Do the flashbacks get to be too much and overpower the plot? At times, yes. But then again, this is a debut. Debuts tend to cram too much in. Did I love the protagonist? Not as such, but did find her compelling. Overall, this debut is quite dense and proved to be a notably slow read, but it was interesting and original enough to entertain. Plus, it allows the reviewer to say, “Now you know. Now, go eat a book.” and that’s just fun in and of itself. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2023
Categories |