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: The Diviners, by Libba Bray

4.75/5

(Mild spoilers ahead)

Libba Bray's The Diviners, yet another YA novel with a seriously dark streak, is set in the glittering Manhattan of the 1920s -- where jazz clubs are hopping, stars are being made, illegal hooch is flowing, and just about anything can happen.

Including the apocalypse.

A small-town girl from Ohio who commits a tipsy and socially ruinous party-foul, seventeen-year-old firecracker Evie O'Neill has been packed off to stay with her bachelor uncle Will in Manhattan (some punishment, right?). Despite the fact that she's stuck with a stuffy academic who runs a creepy museum (formally known as "The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition and the Occult," but mostly referred to as "The Museum of the Creepy Crawlies"), Evie is thrilled at the chance to taste big-city life for herself, and proceeds to duck Will and drag her quiet friend Mabel into fabulously-attired trouble at every opportunity.

But then Will is called to consult on a brutal murder with ritualistic occult overtones, and Evie brashly invites herself along to the crime scene. Here, her "party trick" again rears its ugly head: Evie has the ability to see a person's history just by touching their belongings. And, when she unthinkingly straightens the buckle on the dead girl's shoe, Evie has a vision like never before: she sees the killer, and he's not like you or me. In fact, it's the infamous occultist John Hobbes (also known as Naughty John) . . . and he's been dead for 50 years. Impossible as it may seem, he's back, and he's got a plan to bring on the end times -- one that's going to take several more bloody rituals.
 
Though it takes Evie, Will, and a host of friends (among them Will's taciturn assistant Jericho, shy Mabel, and street-smart scoundrel Sam Lloyd) almost 600 pages to unravel the supernatural killer's complex and gruesome intentions, The Diviners has never dull moment. Manhattan in 1926 is a huge canvas, and Bray brings it to life with flair -- the catchy slang, the clothes, the music, the promise in the air -- so "everything's jake," as Evie might say. The cast is also quite large, and full of vivid characters like iconoclastic Ziegfeld girl Theta; her charming "brother" Henry (read: gay bestie); Memphis, a poet who longs to be part of the Harlem Renaissance but runs numbers in the meantime; and Memphis's little brother Isaiah, who is having apocalyptic visions of his own. Each provides additional interest and intrigue, since they all have unique secrets and nightmares to conceal.
And, as the plot thickens and the killer counts down to a rare comet's appearance in the sky, they all, knowingly or not, play a part in the action.

I'll freely admit I thoroughly enjoyed every page of The Diviners, but do have one or two slight reservations, the foremost being that at times this book is extremely frightening and/or bloody, and it also includes scenes of sexual violence. While I found the book (appealingly) disturbing as a horror-jaded adult, it certainly would have scared the bejayzus out of me when I was the tender target age for YA lit. 

Also, some aspects of the novel are almost laughably revisionist. For example: were seventeen year-olds really nightly fixtures at underground gin-joints, and did unescorted white girls often go to Harlem to hear jazz and flirt with black musicians, or wind up at hush-hush gay nightclubs? True, Bray is focused on boho underground culture -- theatricals, artists and musicians -- but the easy attitudes her characters have about race and sexual preference certainly weren't the norm at the time. In fact these kinds of "transgressions" regularly got people beaten or killed up until at least the 1960s, and (sadly) still might in some places. I guess I really can't fault Bray for trying to inject a little tolerance into her imagined 1920s -- after all, if we can buy a supernaturally resurrected serial killer, I guess Theta can fall for Memphis and Henry can dance cheek-to-stubbled-cheek with whomever he likes.

In the end, I might hesitate before handing The Diviners to my (imaginary) thirteen year-old cousin, but it's most definitely going on my Best-of-2012 list. And despite frequent rants about "sequelitis" on the YA and paranormal fiction shelves, I am not at all unhappy to hear Evie and company will return for further adventures. If nothing else, they bring the kind of clever vibe to fighting apocalyptic evil that calls to mind a different set of supernatural white-hats, also led by a sassy blonde. In fact, sometimes you can almost see Will cleaning his glasses -- and if you get that reference, you'll love The Diviners.

Book Review: The Scorpio Races, by Maggie Stiefvater

4.5/5   

I had been meaning to read The Scorpio Races  for quite awhile -- it's been sitting patiently on my tablet waiting for an opportunity to stand out. Then I took only my e-reader on vacation, and there it was. Now I'm just sorry I waited so long it's already being developed for the big screen. 

I suspect Maggie Stiefvater's  Printz Award-Honored novel is one of those books labeled as YA-specific at least in part because it can be: there's no sex or drugs, or even any particularly foul language. It has a feisty teenage heroine, a taciturn, moody hero . . . and YA is the hottest market to be in. True, it is a coming-of-age story, but much like The Hunger Games before it, or "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" before that, this is a "YA" story whose central concerns are ageless -- loss, family loyalty, poverty, desperation, endurance, and the weight of responsibility. (Also? Like the other two: there's death and violence, lots and lots of violence.) It would simply be a shame if the YA designation scared off potential adult readers by putting The Scorpio Races on the same shelf as Twilight. <climbs off soapbox>

Set on a rocky, uncompromising island somewhere off the Western coast of not-quite Ireland, in not-quite the mid-twentieth century, TSR is not-quite the story of a girl and her horse. Well, it kind of is, but in no way you'd expect. What it also is: original, tense, otherworldly, and filled with wild, strange danger.

A " . . . crag jutting from the sea . . . hours from the mainland . . . all horses and sheep and one-track roads" -- Thisby's  biggest claim to fame is the Scorpio Races.

Each autumn, a festival is held which attracts wealthy tourists and gamblers from "the mainland," even as far as America. The days-long festival culminates in a horse race, one which kills  a significant number of riders -- bloodily -- every year. For on Thisby, as the month of October wanes, the capaill uisce, terrible, magical and bloodthirsty horses from the sea, emerge from the waves to menace the island, and insanely brave men  lose their limbs or worse catching and breaking them to ride in the annual abbatoir that is race day.

Kate (called "Puck") Connolly and her brothers, Finn and Gabe, were orphaned by the capaill uisce, both parents killed in a bloody boat attack. (Yes, they will attack both animals and humans, especially as autumn progresses.) After two years alone, the kids are barely getting by. When Gabe, the oldest and breadwinner, announces he's leaving Thisby for the mainland, Puck is heartbroken and desperate at the prospect of fending for herself and younger brother Finn. Thinking of the purse -- and  of punishing Gabe -- Puck makes a rash and foolhardy decision: she declares she'll be the first girl to compete in the Scorpio Races, and she'll ride her own (regular) mare, Dove, against the deadly water horses.    

Sean Kendrick too, lost a parent to the capaill uisce . . . his father, and in the Scorpio Races themselves. But horses run in his blood: at nineteen, he's won the races four times, and will ride again this year on Corr, a powerful red water horse he has managed to quasi-domesticate. Sean is a preternaturally good trainer, handling both normal and water horses better than anyone else on the island. But he's also poor, and to survive Sean works at the breeding stables of the rich, unpleasant Malverns. His dearest dream is to run his own stable, but he hopes this year's purse will at least allow him to buy Corr outright.

And then, Puck meets Sean. But it's not-quite going to go the way you imagine. 

Two appealing protagonists are set on a potentially fatal collision course, and it makes for juicy tension; adding carnivorous water-horses into the mix makes it feel like a fevered fairytale. Which it kind of is: Stiefvater has transformed the mythological Celtic "kelpie" into a magnificent and terrifying reality, a monster which nevertheless has a breathtaking beauty and primal appeal. And around the capaill uisce she has built a world so grounded and real -- so  vividly normal --  that the water horses deliver exactly the alien, bone-chilling intrusion that they should. 

I have to confess I'm a a sucker for good art direction, and The Scorpio Races is a lovely odd, strange, exhilarating, melancholy book (maybe it's the Celtic influence). If, on occasion, the characters' decisions seem a bit predictable (hence the 4.5/5), it almost doesn't matter, since the tale quickly distracts again with its tension and eerie beauty.