Review: "The Monstrumologist" by Rick Yancey

Title: The Monstrumologist
Author: Rick Yancey
Publisher: Simon & Schuster BFYR, 2009

This is what you should be reading this October 31st.

The diary of Will Henry chronicles his apprenticeship with the eminent, albeit known only within certain circles, Dr. Pellinore Warthrop, monstrumologist and scholar. Will's tale begins in 1888, when he is 12 years old. Dr. Warthrop has been told, secretly and in the middle of the night, of a strange and horrific creature found during a grave robbing. This monster, which he quickly identifies as an adult male Anthropophagus, is only one of a pod of the enormous, man-eating predators in the New Jerusalem area. Certain questions arise: Why are they in New England, when their natural habitat is in Africa? Why are they so many? And why have they suddenly emerged from hiding to feast on human flesh once again? Warthrop and Will must find out these answers, but they also must end this infestation before it is too late for the people of New Jerusalem.

There is a blurb on the front of this book from VOYA, which calls this novel "A cross between Mary Shelley and Stephen King." I really can't think of a better description. The horror and gore in here is so intense and ever-present,  yet philosophy is threaded throughout all of this in Will's musings as he writes down his experiences years later. Morality, loyalty, duty, and inheritance are at the heart of the novel, interspersed with the action and horror.

I love that this is a framed narrative. The book begins with a modern-day author who is given the notebooks found in Will Henry's room after his death—the proprietor of the home he was staying is interested in looking for clues within the writing to the identity of the man who called himself Will and claimed to be 131 years old, born in 1876. The first narrator then shows us this first part of Will's diary, and when he is finished with that, tells us about his often fruitless research about finding more information or ways to corroborate the story within Will's notebooks. This hearkens back to Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, for sure, a nice tip of the hat to early horror literature. It also provides us with a mystery and second storyline to follow in the subsequent books of the series.

The setting of the late 1800s makes this book seem much more like the classics we read in school, giving it an authentic taste of the Gothic that used to be so prevalent. The language is sublime and eloquent, yet still accessible for teens today. Not to mention the often breakneck pace of the story.

This is a perfect book to read around Halloween. Scary and creepy, full of suspense, plenty of blood and guts, and exquisite writing. I'll definitely be getting to The Curse of the Wendigo soon!

Disclosure: I won this book in some giveaway I never remembered entering. Seriously, this and the next book in the series just showed up at my house one day with a note telling me I won them but not what  I won them for. Whatever. I'll take it.

Spooky Halloween Blog Tour for "The Night Wanderer" by Drew Hayden Taylor

Title: The Night Wanderer
Author: Drew Hayden Taylor
Publisher: Annick Press, 2007
How I got it: This book was sent to me by the publisher for review.

Tiffany Hunter is dealing with a lot. She lives in Otter Lake, an Anishinabe (Ojibwa) reservation in central Ontario with her dad and grandmother. She's doing poorly in school, she fights with her dad constantly, and to make matters even more difficult she is trying to navigate a new relationship with a white boyfriend. Demons and ghost stories are the last thing on her mind—but they're the center of everything for Pierre L’Errant, the new boarder Tiffany's father has just taken into their home. Though from Europe, he is clearly Native, and mentions he is of Anishinabe ancestry. But who is he really, and where did he come from? Why has he come to Otter Lake, of all places? In The Night Wanderer, Drew Hayden Taylor gives us a new and refreshing twist on the centuries-old legend of the vampire.

The more I thought about this book, the more I liked it. At its heart, it is about home and family. Tiffany struggles with this, as she is constantly battling with her father over pretty much anything, though especially about her boyfriend Tony. There are a lot of underlying issues with this, as Tiffany's mother left her father, Keith, for a white man about a year earlier. Keith is still trying to recover, and unfortunately he isn't getting very far. He doesn't know how to handle his daughter, so he lets out his anger and pain on her—and she returns it full force. Stuck in the middle of this is Granny Ruth, Keith's mother. She's feisty, but is trying to deal with all of this pain and anger and not-talking-about-the-real-issue on her own, until Pierre enters the picture.

Pierre is a character we can sympathize with, though we're not sure we can trust him. His motives aren't clear until the very end. But what is clear is his attachment to his homeland, the place where he was born centuries before, when he made the decision to leave it and everything he knew for adventure and the unknown. He is not the tortured vampire struggling with what he is at his very essence, though there are hints that he has thought about it. He knows what he is and accepts it, which is truly a nice change from the brooding bad-boy vampire so popular in today's teen fiction.

Taylor works Anishinabe (more commonly known as Ojibwa) culture and language into Pierre's and Tiffany's intersecting stories—both in the modern and more ancient culture and teen experiences. Tiffany is trying to sort out what it means to be a part of her native community, often trying to escape it, though sometimes feeling guilty for not knowing more than she does (for example, she can't speak the language, like her grandmother). Usually I am hesitant to read fiction about certain cultures, especially Native American ones, for fear of misrepresentation of the people and the history. But because Taylor is Ojibwa himself, I trusted his descriptions and allowed myself to enjoy the story, knowing it is authentic. He also manages to include an interracial relationship and its resulting difficulties, such as racism and Tiffany's discomfort at being the only Native teen in a group of white ones.

Another thing I loved are the sometimes surprising little dashes of humor Taylor throws into his prose every so often. I found myself sporting a quick grin at many little details he includes, like this sentence in the middle of a suspenseful scene: "From deep in the bush, a hunter older than James, his house, and the mayonnaise at the back of his refrigerator all put together watched him closely" (79). But despite this comic relief, there are a few chapter that got my heart pounding—many strange and unnatural things are seen on the Otter Lake Reservation after Pierre arrives.

My only complaints lie with the characterization of Tiffany. For a while I felt like she was too flat of a character—I wasn't really getting where she was coming from, and she just seemed a bit off through the beginning. It took me a while to get into the book because it was mostly about Tiffany at first. However, once Taylor started writing about Pierre and other characters, I could see his talent better. I found out afterward that this was originally written as a play, and I thought that might have had something to do with it.

These days, everyone is sick of vampires and their sparkles and forbidden love interests in virginal white girls. But with his fresh interpretation and the addition of family drama and the importance of home, Taylor has given us a reason to enjoy vampire novels again.

This is the last stop on the Spooky Halloween Blog Tour, but be sure to check out the previous stops:

October 25: Teresa's Reading Corner
October 26: A Girl Reads a Book and YA Book Shelf
October 27: Chick Loves Lit
October 28: Word of Mouse Books
October 29: Me!

Until Halloween, The Night Wanderer ebook will be available for only $3.29 (regular price: $9.99) at Kobobooks.com! It's also available as a physical book at Amazon.com.



Or if you'd like to win a physical copy of The Night Wanderer for yourself, fill out the form below. This giveaway will end on November 1 at noon EST. Only one entry per person, please! I will delete people who enter more than once. If you're not sure you entered already, just shoot me an e-mail or tweet at me and I'll let you know.

Top Ten Books for Halloween!

Hi everyone! This week I wanted to do a Top Ten Tuesday in honor of Halloween, so I've picked out my top ten 10 spooky/creepy/scary books for the season. And, okay, some of them might not have actually scared me, but they are appropriate for Halloween. (This is also the main TTT on The Broke and the Bookish, so head on over there to put your own top ten list on the Mister Linky!)

1. Dracula by Bram Stoker: Gotta pay homage to the guy who made vampires scary and brought them into pop culture. Plus this book is pretty creepy, what with the dead coming back for the blood of the innocent and all.

2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: This is not so much scary as, again, a work that has influenced countless others. I would argue that this is the first real science fiction novel, though if you can think of an earlier one let me know!

3. In the Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan: I usually hate zombie anything, but this was so character-driven and the writing was so wonderful that I completely overlooked that. It was only afterward that I started to get the heebie jeebies, but it was totally worth it. Definitely a good Halloween-time book if you can handle the scary factor.

4. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer: This is a different kind of scary: the end-of-the-world scary. No post-apocalyptic book has made me so grateful for the life I lead and that our moon is staying put. After putting this one down I had to remind myself that I didn't need to squirrel away incredible amounts of canned goods.

5. Sunshine by Robin McKinley: Not necessarily scary, but one of the best vampire books I've ever read, ever. And I've read a lot. But this is certainly for the more mature reader, and not little kids (language and sexual content and whatnot). But seriously, READ IT.

6. The Road by Cormac McCarthy: Again, the post-apocalyptic scariness. Add to this the cannibals roaming the land in search of any flesh, but mostly human. Terrifying to think about a world where there is no order except the strong turning against the weak... and eating them.

7. Coraline by Neil Gaiman: The button eyes! THE BUTTON EYES. It's creepy, but also, what an awesome character. Coraline rocks.

8. The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z by Max Brooks: I admit, I didn't read these because of my fear of anything zombie. I did own them, but I got too scared to read them and just ended up donating them to my local library's book sale.

9. The Bailey School Kids series by Debbie Dadey and Marcia T. Jones: So yes, not scary. But so clever and fun! I love this series, and always will. Especially Werewolves Don't Go to Summer Camp, probably because I believe it was the first one I read.

10. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and sequels by Alvin Schwartz: We listened to some of these one tape in the third grade, and the one about the head falling down the chimney scared me for YEARS. No lie. But it was more the pictures in these that really make them scary. The old ones that I grew up with are TERRIFYING. Just look at this:

Yeah. Good luck getting to sleep tonight.

What are your top ten scary books? Or just favorite ones to read near Halloween?

"Days of Little Texas" by R.A. Nelson

Title: Days of Little Texas

Author: R.A. Nelson

Publisher: Knopf, 2009

Where I got it: My local libary.

Why: I saw it on the horror shelf, read the flap and was intrigued.

Little Texas is not a place, but a person—16-year-old revivalist preacher Ronald Earl, hailed as a boy wonder and a faith healer. Since the age of 10, he has been preaching as part of the Hand of God ministry, headed by his great-aunt Miss Wanda Joy and in the company of Sugar Tom, an old evangelist preacher, and Certain Certain, descendant of slaves and Ronald Earl's confidante and best friend.

During one healing, he is struck by a girl in a blue dress he heals. She looks like a girl from dreams he's been having and can't shake the thought of her after they leave that small town. But then he sees her at the next meeting, and again, and again. Is she following him? Who is this mysterious girl in blue? And the question that plagues Ronald Earl most of all: is she even human?

The plot is what drives the story of Ronald Earl (aka Little Texas) and Lucy (the girl in the blue dress). The descriptions of the scary bits are great and definitely get your heart pumping. There were parts where I couldn't put the book down. But then again, once I did put it down I didn't feel too compelled to pick it up right away. I don't know if it was just my mood or the fact that I didn't necessarily have large chunks of time in which to read it. I broke it up too much and disturbed the flow of the story, making it less of a compelling read for me.

I am happy to say there are deeper issues and themes present within the story. Mainly a horror story, we follow Ronald Earl through his realizations of his own beliefs and his doubts of his faith. He is certainly a devout Christian who believes everything very strongly, yet he is growing into a man and, as it happens, begins to get urges that he sees as sinful and unholy.

I wasn't sure how Nelson would handle the Christian aspect of this book, especially once it's clear that it has a number of supernatural elements, one of which is the presence of ghosts. Yet Nelson never demeans Christianity, which I was afraid he would do; on the contrary, he seems to hold Ronald Earl up as a hero of the light. He certainly takes liberties within the story, as is the case with supernatural novels, but he is never condescending. Ronald Earl's faith is quite inspiring, though I wouldn't go so far as to say this book is a good example of Christian fiction (it's not at all). I think there is some doubt at the very end in Ronald Earl's mind about his faith, which just confused me; it is so out of place in the context of Ronald Earl's previous actions and thoughts.

*POSSIBLE SPOILERS*

Nelson also delves into issues like racism, as slavery plays a huge role in the plot. It almost bordered on saccharine toward the end, but there were some good messages about owning some of the responsibility for what happened in the past. As Certain Certain says, "It's what we all owe, Lightning [his name for Ronald Earl]. You know what I'm sayin'? Ain't enough just to say, 'Wasn't me, wasn't you'" (69). Lucy agrees later on: "I know, we didn't do it, we weren't alive back then...but we've benefited, right? From what our ancestors did? Even all these years later?" (371). It's at least an acknowledgement of white privilege, even if it gets a little schmaltzy. That, I think, is a start.

As for the characters, I felt they could have been more rounded out. Ronald Earl is kind of boring, to be honest, despite all the praise he gets from EVERYONE, including the ghosties. He's full of light, but he's still kind of dull. And the romance between him and Lucy was just so unbelievable to me. I still don't understand why Lucy loves him—where did she even get the information about him? Is it just because she's a ghost and knows stuff she wouldn't otherwise? And does Ronald Earl's love for Lucy just stem from his lust for her? I just don't buy it, and that's after I've suspended my disbelief to a large extent in the first place.

Miss Wanda Joy is pretty transparent. She claims to be a firm and devout believer, but it's clear she doesn't have the conviction Ronald Earl has. She's out to get enough money for them to live comfortably, especially toward the end. She is not a very good example of a Christian, in my opinion.

Also, what the heck was up with Faye? She was ALL OVER Ronald Earl and, after her role was played in the plot, she was barely mentioned again. I felt like she was just a plot device and had no value to the book other than as a source of information.

ANYWAY. I think that sums it all up. It was enjoyable, though I had trouble getting through it for whatever reason; I just wasn't feeling it at the time. But if you're looking for a ghost story with a different flavor, check this one out.