The Devourers

A Novel

By: Indra Das

Narrated by: Shishir Kurup, Meera Simhan

Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

For listeners of Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, China Miéville, 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 17th-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 listening experience quite unlike any other novel.

©2016 Indra Das (P)2016 Random House Audio

Wonderous

I haven't read such a powerful book in a long time. This should go down as a classic of horror along with Dracula, Frankenstein and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Simply amazing prose and story!

Breathtaking, haunting & full of base human hunger

This is a story that isn't for everyone, even though I feel like everyone should read it. it's prose are stunning, the story winds through several different lives that all feel rich, and important all while never shying away from humanities deepest and darkest vile nature's. Bravo to the performers, great listen.

Fantastic queer fantasy story!

I loved listening this queer and beastly story set in colorful India. It is so imaginative and new yet keeps with some classic fantasy themes. This author does use the words "shit" and "piss" a number of times but it works with the animalistic themes which the book is mostly about. I can see how those words would be unnerving to some readers if they are not familiar with the queer and kink scenes in their own lives.

very odd

This is a very odd story, there were a lot of aspects that I liked, but many parts felt like they went on too long. As much as I think many authors detrimentally avoid talking about bodily fluids and functions, the author went to far in the other direction and described everything in an almost fetishistic manner, and does not seem to know a single synonym for shit or piss. The setting and interesting structure of the story telling were probably the best parts, but weren't enough to overcome the tediousness and I found myself struggling to finish listening. The readers are very good though and I would definately listen to other books narrated by them.

Really into bodily fluids

Which did actually fit the story being told, though it sometimes did seem a bit gratuitous. The story was an interesting take on werewolf/ shapeshifter mythology so I kept with it through tedious parts. This is a tale told in journal and remembrances of multiple characters through time, so it did seem like the same information was covered a lot. I liked the narrator, but sometimes he seemed to mix the voices of the 2 leads which made following the story sometimes difficult.

Myth brought to life of piss and carnage

I really didn't like the book overall. I felt the author was obsessed with piss and phalluses. The interludes of myth, which were brilliant and engrossing were too brief to make up for the overall sense of disgust I walked away from the novel with. The author's points about female enslavement and power dynamics felt heavy handed and overall false. It just didn't work for me. Sad because some of the writing was just beautiful.

What a SNOOZE!

This book was so boring, it took me 3 times as long as it usually takes me to finish! And not to mention the author's - oh excuse me, the "narrator's" - speech at the end. I get it, the author wants to explore gender, possibly even their own. But don't make me listen to a entire book just to get to that point! God, this was so boring.

Hard to get into...

and even harder to continue with. Although I can appreciate the overall reading of this story it did not keep me interested at all. Nothing about it made me want to continue. Hopefully I can finish it eventually.