Funny, tragic, wise, tender and beautifully written. It also left me gasping with shock . . . It is with a mixture of respect and delight that I greet any book capable of blasting an entire genre out of the water with its audacity and grace. Tender Morsels is such a book

A striking retelling of the Grimms' Snow White and Rose Red, told in a rich yet remote prose style, it is, like Lanagan's awardwinning collection of short stories, Red Spikes, likely to appeal to teenage girls with a taste for the original and the sinister

A work of genius

It's a rewardingly complex and emotional story told in highly imaginative prose. The worlds Lanagan creates are so rich and multi-layered it's easy to get lost in the book's 500 pages, never wanting to leave

Ambitious and difficult with multi-layered prose that will work its way into your very soul

A genre-smashing novel

It grips the reader from the outset, and as it is read, layer upon layer of psychological and intertextual meaning can be unpicked and analyzed. It is certainly an immensely powerful contribution to both fairy-tale and fantasy genres

Brave and bold

This is an astonishing and beautifully written novel with very strong cross-over appeal

To condemn it as merely wilful taboo-breaking is to miss the humanity in what is one of the strangest and most moving works of children's literature I have read in years . . . Look beyond the shocking scenes and this is a novel that explores the most profound human emotions with a clear gaze; it made me weep like a child at the end

Enthralling, at times unsettling but always richly imagined

This is a multi-layered novel which requires and deserves attentive reading, regardless of the reader's age; it is unlikely, though, to have much appeal for the censorious adult or for anyone under 16

Edric succeeds in painting an atmospheric dystopia that is at once unsettling and frightening and laudable for its skilful evocation of the doom and the despair