Book Report: What Feeds Below
By: Cassie Birk
Edited by Caelin Sullivan
Tatiana Scholte-Bonne's new horror fantasy is here! Do you fit our report's reader profile?
BEFORE WE DIVE IN…
Genre: YA Fantasy and Horror.
Age Group: While geared towards a YA audience (our protagonist does make some teenage-like decisions), fans of adult horror will still appreciate the writing style.
Content warnings for the following described on page: Body Horror, Toxic Relationship, Death of a Parent (off page), Gore.
Spice Level: None. Survival, not romance, is the focus of the story.
Page Count: 266 pages.
Series: Nope! This is a standalone.
ABOUT THE BOOK
What Feeds Below is told in first-person from the perspective of Petra, a seventeen-year-old orphan who is working as a void diver. Void divers risk their lives to take tourists and fortune seekers alike down to one of the six levels of the underground realm of the void in the center of the city, with danger and commission increasing the deeper they go. Those who spend too long in its layers risk becoming voidlings, beings who’ve mutated and adapted to the void’s atmosphere and can never leave.
Jade, Petra’s best friend, fellow orphan, and void diving partner, will take risks and go down deeper and spend more time away from the surface, while Petra just wants to make enough money before she turns eighteen to open a clinic where she can live and use her knowledge of the void’s strange plantlife to work for the vulnerable members of her community. Jade normally gets her way since their friendship is Petra’s entire world, so she agrees to go miles down to the deeper levels with the higher payout.
When their job takes them deeper into the void than Petra has ever been before goes horribly wrong and Jade is lost, she recruits her former friend Flint for a rescue. The catch? To get his help, Petra must agree to travel all the way to the sixth level. What awaits down in the sunken city at the bottom of the void is not anything Petra is prepared to face.
READER PROFILE
You might find this book a great fit for your TBR if:
The Devil’s Mouth was your favorite summer streaming release. We’ve got the complicated female friendship, deadly caves, and gore. Petra does have to contend with cave anglers and skinleeches rather than a bloodthirsty shark, but isn’t that more fun?
Horticultural Horror like Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, Don’t Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews, What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher, and Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia are topping your faves list.
Treasure-filled quests like Atlantis or Empire of Shadows by Jacquelyn Benson are right up your alley and you are not afraid for the next adventure you read to involve a lost limb or two.
You are crossing over from manga to more western lit. Deep cut for the otaku girlies, but if you want to see Maomao from Apothecary Diaries as a sherpa in Dungeon Sherpa but the dungeon she’s leading adventurers through is from Rust-Eater Bisco and the whole thing is tense and spooky, this is pretty dang close (also, we should be friends).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Image Credit: Jordon Walter
Tatiana Schlote-Bonne is the author of two other standalone horror novels, Such Lovely Skin and The Mean Ones. She has an MFA from The Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, where she still lives today. She is of Japanese, Mexican, and European descent. Find her lifting some seriously heavy weights on Instagram @thebuffwriter
WHAT READERS THINK
“The world building is very easily the most interesting thing about this story. The author is really good at building the imagery and environment of the Void and the life on the surface. The characters were inconsistent and I didn’t find them all that interesting. This book reads towards the younger ages of YA. It is just a me thing, I find YA fine but when it reads as for the younger ages of YA it kinda bores me. It usually turns me off of a book, but I liked the world building too much to put this one down.” —ambanga via StoryGraph
“This book blew me away. I could picture it in my head like a movie, and for that reason it scared the crap out of me. The creatures, claustrophobia, the unknown… It was easily one of the scarier books I’ve ever read. That’s all a credit to not only the author’s fascinating imagination, but also amazing writing. I could easily read 10 more books set in this world.” — Brittany K, via GoodReads
“really enjoyable read. eerie and dark but also emotional and layered. petra really grew on me & my gut feelings on the other characters did me good. the character growth was so yum. such intricate world building, intriguing, fresh, disturbing. beautiful writing the imagery really comes through.”—Meg via Fable
BOOK REPORTER’S REVIEW
I absolutely adored What Feeds Below and it may end up in my top reads of the year. While Jade, Petra, and Flint have to deal with some deliciously creepy void monsters, the biggest monster of them all is capitalism. Bramida’s City of the Void is equal parts dungeon crawl (it even has an underwater level!) and western mining town, which gave Petra’s world the perfect kernel of truth to ground the more fantastical stakes of the story.
The disability rep with Flint, who is an amputee, helped heighten the danger and void without making him weak or a spectacle. Even after losing a limb, there is no safety net for void divers to retire, they just have to go into debt for a prosthetic, making paying it off even more dangerous and desperate.
While she certainly made some dumb decisions, I had to remind myself that this is YA, Petra is seventeen, and I would probably be equally as stupid. The complex dynamics between Jade and Petra are something I am excited for teenage readers to have access to. Coming to What Feeds Below soon after finishing The Mean Ones, there was a strong evolution in how the author approached female friendships that only made the twist even better. I couldn’t be more excited to read the next world Tatiana writes!
Thank you to NetGalley, Boozhoo Books, and the rest of the Bindery team for providing an advanced digital copy for this report!
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