Book Review: The Monstrumologist, by Rick Yancey

5/5

What a wonderful, terrible, hilarious, disgusting, compelling adventure yarn The Monstrumologist is! I've never read anything even remotely like it. In easy-to-digest list format, here's why you need to read this book.

1) The monsters -- Anthropophagi -- are refreshingly terrifying. Savage, headless man-eaters out of ancient lore (some of which Yancy's titular character references on the case), they are fierce, fast and thoroughly, foully, inhuman. This rarefied species has inexplicably appeared in a small New England town and embarked on what promises to be a no-holds-barred feeding frenzy. These nasty beasties are a welcome addition to the horror pantheon, which has nurtured so many romanticized monsters of late. You do not want to date one of these fellows, of that you can be sure. On they other hand, they'd love to have you incubate their offspring. They look a little something like this:


2) The sweet-and-sour relationship between the peculiar Monstrumologist (who is something like a bizarro-world Sherlock Holmes on one of his manic benders), and our narrator, the plucky and resilient twelve year-old orphan Will Henry. Will has, sadly, recently inherited his father's position as the monster-hunting scientist Dr. Pellinore Warthrop's assistant, and is about to be plunged into the kind of mayhem that makes even professional monster-hunters quail. Before the tale is told, Will will see (and do!) unthinkable things in the name of science and saving the world; learn the fine art of being indispensable; and forge himself a new family from the ashes of tragedy.

3) Yancey's writing is simply wonderful. Densely descriptive without being dull; poetic without being pretentious. Top notch plotting as well. I've seen reviews suggest it was slow at points, but I couldn't put it down at any point. When the action slows down, the character development picks up the slack with sharp, funny dialogue and moments of painful honesty about the human (and inhuman) condition. These quiet sections sometimes also serve to subtly build and attenuate the dread that hangs over Will's every step to a spectacular payoff. Beware this book's potential to induce squealing like a little girl and/or jumping out of your skin. Also? Some barfing, because . . .

4) It's viscerrific! The Monstrumologist is one of the bloodiest (and brain-iest, and pus-iest, and maggot-iest) books I have ever read. The gore is so over-the-top that at times I laughed and cringed simultaneously. I know it's considered a YA novel (and has the Printz-prize sticker to prove it); however I'm pretty sure it would have terrified me, even as a teen. Granted, I was kind of a wuss, but there were at least two scenes where the jaded, adult me felt the need to avert my gaze -- just skip ahead, la-de-da -- because I really didn't want any more detail about the particular variety of disgustingness happening on the page. (No, no, no, no, NO. A world of no.) You'd better be sure your kid can take the relentless gross-out -- I'd read it first, just to see if you can.

Grotesque, rollicking, unique and scary fun, The Monstrumologist has made a Rick Yancey fan out of me. I can't wait to get my hands on the second installment, The Curse of the Wendigo.

Book Review: Southern Gods, by John Horner Jacobs

    5/5 

1950s, the deep south. Hardboiled noir meets the Memphis blues and eldritch Lovecraftian horror. If any of those words ring your bell (or induce skittering waves of nauseous-yet-pleasurable horror), you must read Southern Gods right now.

Get ready to welcome the Old Ones to the bayou, when elusive blues player Ramblin' John Hastur releases a record that curdles the soul and calls to those that wait in the gulfs between the stars. Enter Bull, a damaged private dick in search of an A&R man gone missing while trying to sign Ramblin' John, and Sarah, an attractive lady with a gruesome family secret and an occult library to die for (who among us doesn't want a peek at the illustrated Necronomicon?), and you'll get an idea of what's in play in John Horner Jacobs' mind-blowing debut novel.

Needless to say, if that first paragraph is gibberish to you, or if appalling violence and obscene ancient rituals put you off your feed, please don't read this book. (There's also a smattering of sex, including a monumentally repulsive scene involving a kind of group possession, as well as lots of smoking, drinking and playing the blues, which you probably won't care for either, you prude.)

On the other hand, if you appreciate tight, literate prose seasoned with a great deal of thoroughly ooky splatter, look no further. Southern Gods made my Best of 2011 list: Horner brings a complicated era vividly to life and at the same time adds an original, dark, and swampy-foetid breath of air to the Lovecraft-inspired new weird.

You have been warned.

Book Review: 99 Brief Scenes from the End of the World, by T.W. Grim

3.5/5 -- MA-LSV

This book started out as a 2.5 and performed the unusual feat of raising itself to a 3.5 by the time I finished it. 99 Brief Scenes From The End Of The World  was stealthy, sneak-up-on-you-good, despite some intrinsic flaws, and I'm glad I stuck with it.

The bad news first: Right out of the box I was irritated that the structure of the book was not as implied by the title. I expected something more like David Eagleman's strange and wonderful Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, only with splatterrific zombie gore. So, when characters and locales began to make repeat appearances, I had to revise my expectation (99 unique pieces of apocalyptic flash-fiction), to reading what is better described as a novel with 99 chapters. These are not always "brief scenes," and some are a bit filler-y, not strictly necessary to the story as a whole. It seems to me that a final round of edits could have pulled this all together into a tight, suspenseful novel not reliant on the random titular number for its structure.

Now for the good news: Grim's book does have a number of things going for it; despite my initial irritation I found it impossible to put down. First and foremost, Grim -- a talented, descriptive writer -- does good character work. Once I finally got to know the core cast of survivors, I became invested their fate(s), and admired the way his craft allows their singular stories to eventually dovetail. Some of the global-picture characters (the foaming-at-the-mouth US President, or the morality-challenged leaders of a Japanese science/weapons lab) certainly might have been excised or toned down a wee bit. Though I suppose they serve to give us a window into the global situation, I found that the struggle for survival (and sanity) of the everyday citizens was more tethered in realism, and gave me more to sink my teeth into.

Speaking of which . . . absolutely key to this particular genre is the splatter, and Grim pours forth an endless stream of surprisingly innovative mayhem. The man knows his gore, and and has a million ways to spill it. in fact, a couple of unbelievably disgusting scenes really worked their way under my skin -- and I eat dinner while watching "The Walking Dead," so do the math. Grim also conceives an unusual twist on the now-standard zombie/rage virus trope (tiny spoiler: it's neither one!) which might allow a continuance of the story . . . something challenging to achieve when writing about an extinction-level event.

Because the unexpected twist piqued my interest, and because it takes a lot to actually gross me out, I not only upgraded this book to "liked a lot" status; I'll happily read any follow-up work Grim gets out there.