The Devourers is like a powerful dream that leaves the dreamer breathless
The Devourers by Indra Das Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine Del Rey Scifi & Fantasy Pub Date: July 12, 2016 Review As Scheherazade captivated her king, with each tale making him eager for more, Indra Das captivates her reader with The Devourers. Like Alok, readers are drawn to the enigmatic stranger and his fascinating tale of primal magic and predatory violence. The vibrant imagery casts a spell, firmly binding both Alok and the reader. The periods of present time between the lush dreamlike past cannot compare. The disorganized business of the humans contrasts sharply to the primal individuality of the tribesmen. The essence of the tribes is hunger. Their nature is dual - humans and beast. Humans are its meat, its source of life. Mixing with humans beyond the predator/prey is forbidden. By sharing the meat, the tribes share memories, stories. By devouring another, one takes their complete nature, their memories, their stories, their sexuality. The act of consuming is one of power, taking to add to the whole. Fenrir hungers to create rather than simply take, and it is this act that is the source of all that comes. Both terrible and utterly beautiful, The Devourers is like a powerful dream that leaves the dreamer quaking and breathless. The aspect of violence and implied sexual brutality make the novel inappropriate for younger readers. 5/5 The Devourers is available for preorder and will be released July 12, 2016. I received a copy of The Devourers from the publisher and netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review. --Crittermom Description
For readers of Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, China Mieville, and David Mitchell comes a striking debut novel by a storyteller of keen insight and captivating imagination. 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. Shifting dreamlike between present and past with intoxicating language, visceral action, compelling characters, and stark emotion, The Devourers offers a reading experience quite unlike any other novel.
