the food chain of monsters of verity
spoilers for anyone who hasn't read the monsters of verity duology.
i finished reading Our Dark Duet by Victoria Schwab yesterday and there’s one small detail that has been bothering me since yesterday that i can’t get out of my head.
the food chain.
see, my understanding of the food chain between humans, the malchai, the corsai, and the sunai is that the malchai feed off of human blood, but can’t feed on the blood of other monsters. similarly, the corsai can feed on humans but not the other monsters and the sunai can but shouldn’t feed on malchai’s because it almost kills them.
and the whole premise of Our Dark Duet was that sloan wanted to gain control of both halves of verity and essentially feed on all of the humans and use the humans to create more monsters. which is all fine and great, but as a biological ecosystem, it’s not really sustainable is it?
because what happens once they run out of humans to feed on? they can’t feed on each other, or if they try they become so sickened by ingesting monster flesh that it almost kills them so if your whole intent is to dominate the humans and eat them, what happens when you run out? because it didn’t seem to me as if sloan had any ideas about how to sustain this kind of existence. and if you’re creating more monsters while also eating humans, that just means that your food supply is running out even faster than if you weren’t creating any monsters period.
from a biological standpoint it doesn't make any sense to me, even if sloan had won against the ftf, how long would his society have actually survived once they ran out of humans? yes he won, but for how long and at what cost since you don't really seem to have a food chain here that can balance itself out should one aspect of it be cut off.
have i completely misunderstood the world-building of this series and this is why this is nagging at me? or am i thinking too hard about this when i’m not supposed to? either way, it’s going to keep bothering me but at least now i’ve put it out into the void that is the internet.
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