To Devour or Not to Devour, That is the Question

“The Devourers” is going to be one of those books that I think people are either are going to really like or really not like. It’s a modern day story about Alok who lives in Kolkata and meets a stranger. We learn from this stranger that he’s half shape-shifter (what we might call a werewolf). Alok and the stranger develop a sort of friendship and the stranger asks Alok to type out the stories found on two scrolls the stranger has been carrying. We jump back in time to two different story lines. One is from a Nordic shape-shifter, Fenrir and the other is Cyrah, a woman we meet in Northern India but who hails from further west. As Alok types out these stories, we begin to see the connection to the stranger.

There’s many different ways of reading this book, so it’s hard to put into words what it’s about. On one hand it’s looking at the nature of humanity through non-human eyes. It’s exploring what love means to different people and how we expect and do express love. There’s also a questioning of who are identities are and whether they are fixed or fluid.

This would be a good text to add in a study of mythology/folktales as it gives the “werewolf” a sort of origin story and history much like “Dracula” did for Vampires. I would say there’s a lot more depth in “The Devourers” than “Dracula” but the former does a better job than say “Trueblood” or “Twilight” has done to update the Vampire mythology.