Did I mention I'm reading my own library? The latest book finished was The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean.
Immediately upon finishing this book I started reading Jane Eyre for some reason. Well, reason one: it's in my library so I must read it, and two: I hadn't quite finished it, and felt I needed to do Brontë's work justice. Jane Eyre is a great read, by the way, and I speculated that maybe one reasom why Dean's own work reads so well is that she seems to be quite conversant with the emotions and inter-personal complexities of Victorian literature.
I'm sure other authors are too, but aren't as good as Dean. One measure of how good a writer she is that the novum, if a work of fantasy can be said to have one, shouldn't really work, in theory. But on paper it does! I was very sceptical at first.
What it is, is this: there are people who are born vampires. So far, so clichéd. However, these are what are called 'mind-eaters', meaning that when the mind-eater sucks the blood of someone, they also ingest all their memories and the vampire temporarily takes on the personality of the mind they've eaten. These vampire mind-eaters can be converted to book eaters, another whole sub-population of vampire, by taking a special drug that is only manufactured by one vampire-family.
The plotting is spectacular, and the action is enveloping. The emotional connections between characters are drawn in a way that I don't think a male author could really pull off, and this is what I mean the the Brontë-ness of this book.
I had no problem at all finishing The Book Eaters, and I can recommend it very highly. Now, back to Jane Eyre!
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