TL;DR Review: The X-Men, as written by Edgar Allen Poe. Dark, haunting, gothic, violent, and twisted in all the best ways.
Synopsis:
Charlie Ovid, despite surviving a brutal childhood in Mississippi, doesn’t have a scar on him. His body heals itself, whether he wants it to or not. Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight car, shines with a strange bluish light. He can melt or mend flesh. When Alice Quicke, a jaded detective with her own troubled past, is recruited to escort them to safety, all three begin a journey into the nature of difference and belonging, and the shadowy edges of the monstrous.
What follows is a story of wonder and betrayal, from the gaslit streets of London, and the wooden theaters of Meiji-era Tokyo, to an eerie estate outside Edinburgh where other children with gifts–like Komako, a witch-child and twister of dust, and Ribs, a girl who cloaks herself in invisibility–are forced to combat the forces that threaten their safety. There, the world of the dead and the world of the living threaten to collide. With this new found family, Komako, Marlowe, Charlie, Ribs, and the rest of the Talents discover the truth about their abilities. And as secrets within the Institute unfurl, a new question arises: What truly defines a monster?
Riveting in its scope, exquisitely written, Ordinary Monsters presents a catastrophic vision of the Victorian world–and of the gifted, broken children who must save it.
Full Review:
I was not prepared to fall so deeply in love with Ordinary Monsters.
From the very first page, this book sets the tone for just how dark it’s willing to go, and has such a powerful character voice that I couldn’t help getting sucked in.
The story follows “talents”, children born with magical abilities—healing, manipulation of dust, invisibility, and more. Every one of these children have suffered in the past; all are orphaned and have led hard lives filled with trauma, abuse, neglect, and hardship. Though they are young, they are very much aged by what they’ve endured, and the result is characters that feel more mature while still being childish on occasion—a fascinating dichotomy that lends to the dark horror undertones.
The children are gathered to the Cairndale Institute, where they are sheltered, protected, and trained alongside others to use their talents. It’s evocative of the X-Men or Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children—only so, so much darker.
Because, as we come to learn, the children’s abilities all involve death. For example, they manipulate dead skin cells to heal, or the “dust” they control is actually dead cells from inside their bodies.
On top of that, there is a dark, mysterious man on the hunt for one of them in particular, and he’s willing to do anything and kill anyone to get his hands on them. In fact, we see in stark detail just how dangerous he is and how little he cares for human life when he casually kills those who fail to give him what he wants.
To make matters even worse (are you sensing a theme here?), there is an undead creature, a “litch”, who is working with this dark, mysterious man to hunt the children. Unkillable, ferocious, and driven by a single purpose, he is a threat that cannot be stopped, even by the gun-slinging, ass-kicking protectors who have been sent to find and bring the talented children home.
Ordinary Monsters is a journey through late 1800/early 1900s America, England, and Japan, with the darkness and despair of that time period on full display. It’s got the flavor of an Edgar Allan Poe novel, deeply poetic and hauntingly beautiful, but with the grim, supernatural flair of gothic fiction.
I read through the entire first half of this (very long) book in a single sitting, because the strong narrative, powerful characters, and gothic tone had me absolutely spellbound. It is one of the most unique works of fiction I have read all year, and one I cannot recommend highly enough.
Leave a Reply