Book Review - FLESH EATER by Travis M. Riddle

(Title: Flesh Eater / Author: Travis M. Riddle / Publisher: Self-Published / Publication Date: October 27, 2020 / Pages: 418)

Book Blurb

Branded as a Flesh Eater, Coal is on the run from Palace Stingers: soldiers tasked with Tracking down those who have consumed flesh and locking them away in specialized prisons.  

After a year of avoiding capture and struggling to scrape by working odd jobs for a local crime lord, Coal is growing desperate.  He learns of someone in the city's underbelly who can erase his record, but her services don't come cheap.

Seeing no other option, he enters a spiderback race with a grand prize valuable enough to pay for his fresh start.  But he's not the only one after the prize, and Coal is about to find out exactly how far he's willing to go to win.

Review

Travis Riddle has the unique ability to write books that are entirely different in theme and sub-genre, yet his stories are crafted so well that they always manage to entertain and captivate the reader.  Whether he is writing horror, speculative fiction, or in this case fantasy, I can't help but really enjoy everything he publishes.

In FLESH EATER, he even deftly manages to make the leap of having his main characters all be animals a la Watership Down or Redwall.  Albeit a little darker and edgier than both.  Being a huge Redwall reader growing up, and now as an adult enjoying dark fantasy the way that I do, this book was such a win/win for me in so many ways.

The main strength of this book, aside from the fantastical animal characters, is the off the charts incredible world-building that we've come to expect from Riddle.  There are so many cool and wondrous locales that serve as the backdrop to Coal's journey and adventures.  It reminded me a little of Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman at times as some of these places leaned toward the weird and macabre.  So if you are someone who likes a deeply layered and mysterious backdrop to your stories, FLESH EATER has one of the best in my opinion.

This was a very different read for me but one that I found super fun and a quick read as well.  I enjoyed getting to experience the different personalities of the characters and seeing how they lined up with their animal personas.  I wanted to see if Travis Riddle would dispatch with the usual stereotypes of how we associate certain animals as bad or good based on their reputations and how they have been portrayed in previous works of literature.  I won't spoil it but it is extremely interesting to see what he has done with some of those stereotypes.

I'm so glad that I got a chance to read this book because it was just the type of magical story that I needed right now, having read a few super emotionally intense books recently.  I recommend FLESH EATERS to anyone who likes fantasies that stretch the boundaries and go beyond the usual confines and tropes.  I had a lot of fun spending time with these characters and the story is one that kept me locked in from beginning to end.  Another solid effort from Travis M. Riddle and I am so looking forward to what he comes up with next.

Overall Rating: