MY ⭐️ RATING: 4.75/5
Format: Kindle Whispersync
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Ordinary Monsters introduces readers to the dark, labyrinthe world of The Talents England, 1882. In Victorian London, two children with mysterious powers are hunted by a figure of darkness -a man made of smoke. Sixteen-year-old Charlie Ovid, despite a lifetime of brutality, 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 two grizzled detectives are recruited to escort them north to safety, they are forced to confront the nature of difference, and belonging, and the shadowy edges of the monstrous.
What follows is a journey from the gaslit streets of London, to an eerie estate outside Edinburgh, where other children with gifts-the Talents-have been gathered. Here, the world of the dead and the world of the living threaten to collide. And as secrets within the Institute unfurl, Marlowe, Charlie and the rest of the Talents will discover the truth about their abilities, and the nature of the force that is stalking them: that the worst monsters sometimes come bearing the sweetest gifts.
With lush prose, mesmerizing world-building, and a gripping plot, Ordinary Monsters presents a catastophic vision of the Victorian world-and of the gifted, broken children who must save it.
MY REVIEW
Stop everything you’re doing, because Ordinary Monsters is an unforgettable historical fantasy story that just kept getting better as it progressed. The slow methodical pacing of the story to go along with the narration by Ben Onwukwe helped set the dark tone with his deep foreboding voice that was both powerful and pleasant. He gave many of the characters the perfect voice with some fantastic accents to boot, but I will say that it took a little bit of time to get used to his voice with female characters, with it being so deep, they did all tend to have a more manly feel to them, even the young ones… but it was still a top notch narration!
Telling a story based in the late 1800’s, in places like London, Tokyo, Scotland, and Mississippi, Miro was able to touch on life during these times with such drastic changes of scenery and interactions with its people, which made me even more excited to start this, especially after seeing comparisons to both X-Men and Umbrella Academy. Both of these make sense because the plot centers around an institute/person collecting orphans with special gifts and helping them learn to use it better. So when I started reading this, I completely understood the comparisons, but as I kept going I realized that those may not be the best to use, I eventually realized that this had way more in common with The New Mutants and Stranger Things, but since New Mutants is technically an X-Men story, that comparison is still there. There were many things with the plot that keyed me in on these, but talking about them would be too spoilery and ruin things for readers that have yet to read this.
“The talents, Miss Quicke, are like a bridge between what is living and what is dead.
They exist between states of being. Between worlds, if you will. The drughr is a corruption of all that. A darker talent. The part of it that was living … is gone.”
Since this story is written in third person limited pov, there are a lot of characters and POV’s that we get to see throughout the story. Like The New Mutants, Ordinary Monsters has a dark tone with an entire ensemble of unique characters with powers that have been collected to help with their abilities, but the characters reminded me so much of some of the cast of Stranger Things that I couldn’t see them any other way. Marlowe reminded me so much of Eleven, and Alice, who is one tough cookie, reminded me a lot of Harper, but the one that reminded me the most of anyone was Ribs. Ribs was easily my favorite character, she made me giggle too many times, and was the perfect comedic relief for the group in the same way Dustin was for his.
There were some other influences that I saw as well, including Star Wars, no, there’s no lightsaber battles here, but there are two characters that had a very Darth Sidious and Darth Vader vibe to them. I thought Miro did an exquisite job of giving a great backstory to show the corruption that lead down the dark path and trying to show some sympathy for the antagonist.
The magic system isn’t anything unique, but it was still very good because a lot of the powers remind me of X-Men or New Mutants, which is where a lot of rightful comparisons come from. What I did like is that he uses five power classes but has different powers under each of those, which keeps it somewhat limited but also unique to styles. One of the most unique powers in this story is very Professor X-like which I thought was cool, because it may be the first time I’ve actually seen that type of power used outside of Professor X.
Wolfmantula.com 