by Chloe Townson
Ages 18+ | $32.99
At over six-hundred pages long, you might try to convince yourself that Ordinary Monsters is far too long and you’d rather not. I’m here to convince that little voice in your head that it’s wrong — it’s just a number, and it’s only intimidating if you allow it to be. You can do this!
But really, you can. Ordinary Monsters is set in London and Scotland in the late 1800s. Think muck and grime and orphans in a dog-eat-dog world, except that world is inspired by great gothic classics like Dracula and Frankenstein.
There’s a school run by an old eccentric — Dr Berghast — who sends his trusty detectives out into the world to bring back ‘talents’ — children with extraordinary abilities who always, for reasons unknown, end up orphaned. The means by which Berghast finds said orphans is also the the gate through which unimaginable evil can be unleashed. One of our young main characters, Marlowe, is the key.
The cast of characters include many strong, independent women who need no man to save them when times are tough and a crew of self-sufficient young charges who do not hesitate to take matters into their own hands — hands that can wield dust as a weapon, that can create giant flesh monsters, that can turn invisible, and that can heal instantly. And then there are the villains, of course, and they’re the best kind. The kind that aren’t black and white. The kind that are complex, and you almost want to root for them. That Jacob Marber — it’s said many times — has very nice hands.
What I’m trying to say, in the end, is that despite it’s length, Ordinary Monsters is so readable you’ll feel as if you’ve immersed yourself into a season of Netflix’s Stranger Things only it’s set two-hundred years earlier. Six-hundred pages feels like two-hundred. If I can do it, you can do it, and I promise you’ll have no regrets.