Tender Is the Flesh

If the government legalized cannibalism and everyone started eating human meat, would you?

This book is a dystopian fiction set in a world where a virus has supposedly made all animal meat deadly to humans. To survive, society turns to the only remaining option—human flesh.

Governments legalize cannibalism, and an industry emerges where people are bred and slaughtered like livestock. The most unsettling part? How disturbingly normal it all becomes, with regulated breeding farms, slaughterhouses, and even premium cuts of ‘special meat.’

There’s also a dark conspiracy lurking beneath it all, that the government may have fabricated the virus to control overpopulation, poverty, and crime. Rather than addressing these issues through reform, they turned humans into commodities—solving hunger while thinning it out.

This book is so unsettling, not just because of its grotesque premise, but because of how vividly it describes the breeding and butchering of human meat. Beyond the horror, though, it’s really a story about a man weighed down by grief. And let me tell you—he’s a fucking hypocrite.

I screamed at the last page, not bcs of the twisted narrative, but because I saw the ending coming and still found it disappointing. I know a lot of people were blown away by this book, but honestly, it just wasn’t for me. I actually have lots of questions but I’ll just keep them.

Muy interesante escuchar la voz del narrador que trata a todos de hipócritas y juzga todo el tiempo pero termina siendo igual o peor que los demás. Hasta que llego el final me sentía un poco incómoda con la voz del narrador por que no me cerraba del todo pero el final fue todo lo que esperaba y mejor (o peor)

I was worried all throughout the book because of the way the main character was being portrayed, but thankfully in the end it's clear that the author wasn't actually trying to make us sympathise. The plot is incredibly original but I think this world-building had the potential for much more

My problem with this book might have been that i had really high expectations from everything that i’ve heard.

I have to admit that the book is a bit disturbing. Bazterrica does a really good job in painting a picture that’s bleak and disgusting, objectifying humans in a way that makes you question your attitude towards how we treat other living beings. However, i found this book to be just a long proposal on the subject “what if we treated humans the way we treat animals?”

It’s not, by any means, a boring or uninteresting question, but the book restricted itself to be entirely descriptive of this scenario with no further plot behind. After all the trouble to create this dystopian world, i feel like all effort was consumed doing just that, and the plot of the book, development of characters and etc did not get as much attention.

My first problem was that it was entirely descriptive. Chapters upon chapters were spent just explaining the process of breading plants, slaughterhouses, sport hunting and leather harvesting and merely substituting animals by humans. And, yes, that does paint a disgusting picture in our head and makes us reflect on how we treat animals, but it felt more like an essay on animal cruelty than a book.

The “miscarriage troupe” felt like a lazy way to avoid finding and explaining a deep sentimental reason that caused the main character’s grievance. It also excused the author from actually developing the wive’s character, who conveniently spent the entire book isolated in her mom’s house. She has no personality or purpose besides attesting that the main character is a man with good character and value because he “was once married and loved his wife and child”.

When “Jasmine” was introduced, i thought the plot would start developing, that something would happen, but was again let down. What i believe should have been a bigger focus of the book - the main character developing empathy towards the “head” and teaching how to be human - ended up being a side part to all the descriptions of “what would happen if X situation was inflicted upon humans and not animals”.

Moreover, after so much effort spent on world building, i have to say i felt like it could have been more believable. My biggest issue was how fast this new world was built, considering it happened in less than one generation. And even though i believe humans are awful and evil, i hardly think that a society would have adapted so fast to cannibalism. It is hard to believe that people could still remember life before “the Transition” so clearly and yet completely dehumanise “heads”. Plus, how were the “heads” raised so fast? It doesn’t make sense that a species as evolved as humans could be turned into animals so fast.

Lastly, there were so many things that could have been explored further and weren’t. Like, for example, the whole part of the leather trade, where she proposes a discussion on racism by talking about “black” and “white” leather, but never actually discusses the issue or creates any thought experiment.

The ending felt rushed - the wife coming back, the betrayal of Jasmine, etc. It all happened so fast that i was more caught off guard by the fact that the book had ended than the betrayal that the main character does to Jasmine. There was no time for the wife to be conflicted with her husband having impregnated a “female”, no time to picture what Jasmine went through and no explanation whatsoever of the MC’s thoughts when he decided to kill Jasmine. I know it was supposed to be a lesson that humans will always betray, always be evil, always be selfish, no matter how different and good they believe themselves to be, but it just wasn’t explored the way it could have been.

I rate this book higher because of the creativity and the slight “disturbing” vibe, even though my dislikes outweigh by likes. It was such an amazing idea that just wasn’t explored how it could have been.