When the real world seems to be going to shit, all you wanna do is go on vacation. Someplace new and exciting where you can grow claws and eat people. This week, we dive into Humans Are Delicious by M.F. Arthur and watch poor little Rye live out our collective dream nightmare.
What Is Humans Are Delicious About?
Rye hates his life, his job, and his distinct lack of claws in our world. So when he finds himself summoned into a bloody demon’s lair, the situation can only go up from there.
Trapped in a cave with no possible hope for escape, Rye is forced into situations none of us want to be in. He has to drink blood to quench his thirst. He has to hide under bodies to survive. He has to eat human flesh to avoid starvation. But something changes. A voice in his head alerts him to new powers, and eventually, escape doesn’t seem like such an outlandish idea. But life on the outside isn’t nearly as easy as Rye thought it would be.
Humans Are Delicious is a fun little horror lit-RPG available on KU. Perpare for blood, guts, and more people eating than you can stomach!
What I Liked
This is a really fun, creative book. It sits pretty squarely between the lit-RPG and the horror genres, although I would say it is probably firmer in the RPG side of things. If you’re unfamiliar with the genre, it’s almost like reading the progress in a video game. There’s usually dungeons, there’s skill trees the characters will follow, and they gain ‘experience’, so to speak.
If you haven’t read a lit-RPG before, this is a pretty decent entry point. The level system is simple. Nothing really scratches the surface, but to be honest, it doesn’t have to. Rye is a human who eats humans. And then he starts liking it. His stats build based on the skills he chooses to use (imagine that), and none of them are all that outlandish if you’re new to the genre. Apart from growing a scorpion-like stinger, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
The plot is simple. Or as simple as a lit-RPG can be, at least. It follows a man in a hole structure and (for the most part) the story is just about Rye trying different ways to escape the demon lair. I went into this looking for something different that would sort of breathe some life back into my Kindle and this did exactly that.
And What I Didn’t
In a similar vein as my last point, one of the things that made this book a really easy read for me is the small cast of characters. But I also think this ended up being a major downfall of the book for me. I’ll spoiler the details below, so read at your own peril.
SPOILER: CHARACTER DEATHS
First off, almost no one lives in this thing. If a monster doesn’t gobble them up, Rye makes pretty quick work of everyone and everything he comes across. There’s no point in getting attached to anyone other than Rye, and even if you wanted to, there wouldn’t be much time. Side characters are not really given any development, which I find kind of difficult for something that’s advertised as horror. There’s a high level of tension throughout the book simply due to being in the belly of the beast, so to speak. I was aching for some side characters, and it never really happens.
SPOILER: RYE’S DEVELOPMENT
Secondly, I fucking hated this guy. I hated him. It’s very rare that I would even finish a book where I hate the main character as much as I hate this guy, but for some reason, I stayed an optimistic fool. For the first, like, ten pages he thinks about maybe helping someone else out, and once he starts to turn into a demon (or get tainted?), that’s gone entirely. From that point on, it’s just manipulation and murder. And while that may work for other people, I just found it unbelievably hard to cheer for him. There is no redemption arc, there’s no reflection, and there is no hope. Quite a dark character for something that I picked up as a light read.
Another point I want to make is that the author has, perhaps, never met a grammar checker before. And while this used to be something that bothered me and was a reason to take a star off, I’ve recently been rethinking this approach. As absolutely backwards as this is, I found myself almost relieved whenever I ran into a run on sentence or a missing word. After picking up and immediately returning three AI written horror novels this month, it was almost refreshing to come across something written with genuine heart. I didn’t find the grammar issue impacted the story, but I’m including it here in case that’s a deal breaker for anyone else.
Final Thoughts
Humans Are Delicious is a very fun book. It was perfect for a change of pace for me, and if you happen to like unredeemable characters, this one would be a five star read. Be sure to pick this one up on KU if you haven’t already, and let me know what you think of it!