The Devourers
Ratings8
Average rating3
"On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, beneath a full moon, as the whirling rhythms of traveling musicians fill the night, college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man's unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion. So Alok agrees, at the stranger's behest, to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments, and once-living skins. From these documents spills the chronicle of a race of people at once more than human yet kin to beasts, ruled by instincts and desires blood-deep and ages-old. The tale features a rough wanderer in seventeenth-century Mughal India who finds himself irrevocably drawn to a defiant woman--and destined to be torn asunder by two clashing worlds. With every passing chapter of beauty and brutality, Alok's interest in the stranger grows and evolves into something darker and more urgent."--
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I had a very hard time getting into this book. I ended up enjoying the story within a story (Cyrah's story), but had to slog through the beginning and the end
Got to say the Indra Das can write, some of the passages in this book are just breathtaking. Interesting story about shapeshifters from a point of view that is not my own. All his characters feel believable and their arcs are interesting. I did feel that this book was too long and a bit too visceral in its descriptions. Also, it might just my bias but I did feel like it was none to subtle critique of colonialism's impact on the modern nation of India, in fact I felt beat over the head with that aspect. Your mileage may vary of course, but this book began to wear me out in the end and I looked forward to being finished.
Oh my god this book was so badly written that I abandoned it after chapter 1. According to other reviewers, it was a gross book full of stains, pee, fluids, and super triggering as well, so I'm glad I didn't go further.
That was my original comment for the book club: So far I feel like the writing is not that great, and that the dialogues are the weakness of the writer, but I'm still intrigued to see where the plot might lead us. I didn't like the part “not to mention a rather romantic outlook on kissing people in their sleep.” They were strangers to each other, right? So kissed without consent is romantic? So far, it feels like a classic bad and mysterious character VS a more polite and listening character. I need more complexity but we'll see : ).
Read and reviewed: 2020-09-09
