Reviews

The Devourers by Indra Das

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kell_xavi's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

3.5

I was enamoured with this writing at the very beginning, Das’ canny worldbuilding on the intricate foundations of mythos and South Asian history. The stories herein are a poetic and gritty recovery of people, fundamentally, though their forms and settings carve the shape of the narrative. The courage and tenacity of one woman (a major player in the text) is an especially strong point, and the choices of the shapeshifters who take the bodies of men deepen what initially appears as swaggering brutality.

There is much about the body here, a visceral beastliness and texture to embodiment in many forms—though it is characterized by releasing of waste, blood, semen more often than is my preference. There is also a violence towards bodies, in their ripping apart and consumption, or the devouring of the title. Sexual encounters are carnal and animal as well, filled with pungency, passion.

This is not a book for everybody, but I appreciated the ways in which Das made his shapeshifters seem more animal than supernatural, with an intensity to their worldliness. There is heat and bulk to them, rage and suffering. There is also a culture told by ritual, language, and customs that I could follow in their repercussions while not fully understanding their meanings. Where romance and human-creature relationship are prevalent in many supernatural novels, The Devourers is a welcome subversion. This book at once denies those plot lines, and works them back in, with more messiness and devastation that creates small, earned moments of tenderness.

My last point, and another delightful subversion, is that this book is very queer. When we first meet him, the narrator (Alok) is quietly and somewhat shamefully bisexual; however, though I emohasize it here, in the text this queerness and gender is shown as a part of having a body—of embodying, using and changing flesh. The shapeshifters can choose the appearance of their first (humanoid) selves and their second (beastly) selves, altering gender or appearing with multiple genitalia. They are also sexual in a way not precluded by gender. Though women are treated with a misogyny that fits the historical context, the author (and the narrative) focus/es on agency and inner life of Cyrah with empathy and admiration.

Content Warnings

w0lfyfr3n's review

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slow-paced

1.0

I was excited to start reading a book that I thought was about queer werewolves but this defied my expectations in the wrong direction. [Spoilers ahead]

For characters that can allegedly shift into any form, the three main non-humans inexplicably take the shape of frustratingly cryptic and uniquely horrid men. I was more interested in what was developing between Alok and the half werewolf but a good 80% of the book is not about their dynamic, and when it is, the nice tender moments are eclipsed by the unsatisfying and mysterious way in which their meetings end

Apart from this, the repeated flippant mentions of all forms of abuse, and the unnecessarily vivid descriptions of all bodily fluids threw me off completely. An overall uncomfortable read.

Content Warnings

charliedryder's review

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challenging dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

morgob's review against another edition

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4.0

Let's say this is more like a 3.5. This was a very strange book, for a lot of different reasons. It's partially odd because it reminds me of some classics that are written in a similar way, where most of the story is told to the reader via another method, sort of like how Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights are. The majority of the story is given to the narrator in the form of some scrolls he must translate and type out. All of the stories pieced together make something quite interesting and quite beautiful, in a very sad way. But the pieces, once separated, are weird and definitely don't seem like they should fit together. In short, this was a very odd but captivating read about "werewolves" and humans, and sort of another take on how very long lives can be lived, to the point where the beast within completely separates from the human self, and I don't mean that just in the way of the shapeshifters. It is a love story at its core, a very sad and despairing one, but it is equally a story of hate. For the entirety of reading it, I wasn't sure if I liked it or not, but for me, the pieces all fit together at the end to form a work of art. This review was very cryptic, I know, but there is a lot that can be given away easily.

kelleyannelyse's review

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dark mysterious reflective 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

3.5

Content Warnings

revacholdawn's review against another edition

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

4.5

lazy_raven's review against another edition

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3.0

it was a bit slow starting to read it but, over all its good. a different twist on supernatural tales. i got lost a few times, occasionally hard to figure out which character is speaking, but being his first published book is fairly well written.