Tak! reviewed Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo
What does it mean to "be-in-kind" with a nonhuman animal? Or in Dr. Sean Kell-Luddon’s …
Feed Them Silence
4 stars
Content warning Feed Them Silence review with spoilers, because I can't figure out how to do it without
This was a hard read.
I identified quite a bit with Riya from the beginning, particularly including the criticism that the researchers were literally objectifying an animal for their own purposes, which did not happen to include helping the animal.
I'm glad that the brain pattern anomalies turned out to be from brain damage instead of something like a two-way connection - it's much more fitting from scientific, literary, and justice perspectives.
I'm missing a sense of finality in the end, feeling a little like Sean's own frustration - Sean didn't grow or change, the corporation keeps on corporating, the research doesn't go anywhere, the wolf pack is going to agonizingly peter out. We just get a snapshot of a bleak slide along an unchanging trajectory from not great to less great, just like real life.
For what it's worth, I'm glad they didn't go all in on the wolf sex.
