How, exactly, did I manage to miss reading this when it first came out? I am bemused, because this is exactly the sort of thing I should have been all over.

Well, thanks to the Hugo packet I have finally devoured it.

Book eaters are exactly what they sound like: they are people who look human, but who rather than eating human-food eat, well, books. (Most of them anyway: there are also a few who eat, uh, minds. So it’s a bit zombie-ish (but not).) These folk live in our world but generally have no interaction with humans – they’re a very insular community, necessarily. They’re also a community on the wane; women tend to have a maximum of two children, and some will have none, for health reasons. An intensely patriarchal society as well, women are moved around and married where needed – and, key to this story, kept separate from their children after about the age of 3.

Devon experiences exactly this life: growing up she is treated as a princess, as the only daughter in the house; she is married off, to act as a brood mare basically. However, she is a feistier woman than the men in her life expect, and when her son is born a mind-eater… well, things go a bit sideways, frankly.

The story is told across two periods, in parallel: Devon growing up, and Devon in the now, living in hiding with her son. Eventually, of course, the past catches up with the present, and we understand exactly how Devon has got to this point. So while we certainly start sympathetic to Devon, our appreciation and horror at what she has endured deepen steadily and relentlessly: Dean gets the pacing just right, with a steady revelation of more and more terrible things committed both by and against Devon.

A story of mothers and children, families both blood and found; highly enjoyable, with compelling and fascinating characters, and a plot that REALLY works.