***SPOILER ALERT: PLEASE DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU AT ALL INTEND TO READ THIS BOOK. Which is fantastic, and everyone should read it. It will ruin it.***

Author: stpolishook

Genre: Horror

What I liked about this book:

This book is about a point in the future where a group of beings known as Sibla, who are aliens or evolved people or something but it doesn't really matter which, keep humans as livestock. They also eat them. This raises so many ethical questions I don't even really know where to start. It's also not really a horror piece. Do not read on if you want to read the book, the rest of the review will spoil.

Our story starts out with the protagonist, Rachel, going through some pretty horrific processing from her wildling encampment, where she is a member of a group of humans that have managed to not be enslaved. It reminds me of people in cattle cars during the holocaust. What she experiences once she gets to the processing center is too horrific for words.

That makes it all the more sharp a contrast when Magnus Turner, a Sibla highly invested in increasing human welfare, buys her. He takes her back to his estate, feeds her, clothes her, and sets her up with his pet human, Alice, to get her well. Which does does. And although she's scared and even horrified at first as the people around her are quietly taken to slaughter, she adjusts.

This entire time Stacey sets both Magnus and Alice up as sympathetic characters, who have quite a history with one another. In my mind, both are villains, because both are killing creatures that are sentient they can have conversations with. Alice is complicit in it. They both think that because the humans' lives are good, it makes up for having killed them.

Which is a real talk in livestock raising today, except the text also points out several times that human beings are far more aware than animals. That brings me to my main beef: Marcus can't simultaneously be a good person, and be killing aware beings...yet I sympathize with him.

That makes it even harder when a few chapters later, after I'd forgotten completely that Rachel was livestock, he kills her. It's a good death. It's swift and not painful, in contrast to the deaths witnessed in the beginning of the book. That just made it more horrifying. I cried. I don't cry at things. Then I sent Stacey a few angry PMs.

This book is extremely well done. The amount of research put in shows. Now that you've read the spoilertastic review, read it.

What I did NOT like about this book:

There were a frustrating number of spelling errors (which I marked when I saw) and a few technical inaccuracies re: raising livestock, particularly the slaughtering of some lambs. Both of these are minor.

Overall:

This is probably one of the best, if not the best crafted book I've ever read on Wattpad.

Rating:

10/10 but please correct the spelling errors before you give it to any agents. I only bumped the review so high because I think the story is well done enough for me to ignore it, since Stacey knows this needs correcting.