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Book Review : The Devourers by Indra Das

 The Devourers 

By Indra Das 


Published Year: 2015 [debut novel]

Page Count: 327 pages 

Medium Used: Kindle PW 

Genre: Supernatural, Werewolves, Shape-shifting, 2024-read. 

Rating : 2/5 



I wanted to read some good books by Indian authors, having just wrapped Tomb of Sand by Geethanjali Shree. This one really made me excited till a certain point. After about 40%, it just became obnoxiously nauseating. I mean .. I just wanted to fling my kindle to the wall and DNf. Yet,I persisted. I dont think I have gained anything from reading this book.  A total waste of time. Such rakshasas or half werewolves (with two halves of a split soul) who are immortal and can shape shift into their were wolf bodies cannot exist in reality right? 

Some scenes are just so yuck and eww for me. Like exchanging half gorged, half chewed animal fat. Like the homosexual smut scenes between the human and the shape-shifting rakshasa. And the practice of their masters having sex with a newly born shape shifter so that they are not overwhelmed by the turning. And how the second/werewolf self is a hermaphrodite and they can engage in group orgies with no sexual barriers. These are both novel, intricate and also very very repelling. 


A Kolkata based young professor is approached by a young man who claims to be a shape-shifting immortal. He gives him a few scrolls to transcribe and through that we come to know his history. He was an offspring to a shape shifter father and a human mother. His father raped his mother and left his seed within her. The woman, Cyrah follows the father,Fenrir with the help of another shape-shifting man Gevaudan. She chambers onto his back and they travel day and night in pursuit of the father. They find him but he abandons the woman and leaves her with the child intact. She gives birth to the child in the forests of Sundarbans and gives him to the tribals for adoption. The story later on covers what happens when he encounters his mother. What is the way of her integration into him. And what about his father..blah blah blah. I couldn't keep my interest even if I tried desperately .. for the last 20 percent of the book. 


The writing is definitely superior to average Indian style. The prose is good. Thats what surprised me and hooked me at first. How good the prose read. Then the story is not so great and my flame petered out. My attention flagged and sagged..


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