Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miro

MOST ANTICIPATED SFF BOOK of 2022 by Tor, The Nerd Daily, CrimeReads, BookBub and more! Ordinary Monsters is a towering achievement: a dazzling mountain of wild invention, Dickensian eccentrics, supernatural horrors, and gripping suspense. Be warned... once you step into this penny dreadful to end all penny dreadfuls, you'll never want to leave. --Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman and Heart-Shaped Box A STUNNING NEW WORK OF HISTORICAL FANTASY, J. M. MIRO'S ORDINARY MONSTERS INTRODUCES READERS TO THE DARK, LABYRINTHINE 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 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 a jaded female detective 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 theatres of Meiji-era Tokyo, to an eerie estate outside Edinburgh where other children with gifts - the Talents - have been gathered. There, 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 what is stalking them: that the worst monsters sometimes come bearing the sweetest gifts. 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.

3.5/5, but I'm more inclined to round it down to 3 stars instead. This book had a really great premise but there were some flaws about its execution that got more and more glaring as the book went on. If these were improved on in the subsequent books, the overall arch of the trilogy might be very interesting to keep up with.

Here are some of the issues that I had with the book:

Info dumpiness - The book does a lot of telling, not showing. More often than not, when it's time for the reader to learn more about something, a random tour or conversation or lecture will happen where a character basically just says everything. For example, after the hazardous ride to the Institute, when Alice Quicke wakes up after being in a coma for a few days, she is immediately brought on a school tour by Mrs Harrogate. Why though? Alice is not a prospective student and even if Mrs Harrogate decided she owed Alice some explanation about what her job had been helping them do all along, surely it didn't need to extend to a physical tour around the school? It just seemed like a contrived way to introduce the readers to the Institute. Another example is the one and only time we actually accompany our main characters into class with Miss Davenshaw. She suddenly makes Komako and the other older students answer apparently very basic questions like what are the different groups of Talents, etc. Again, it seemed like a contrived way to spell out the lore and the magic system of the world.

Pacing - The first maybe 30ish% was actually not bad. It was all very engaging until they finally escaped from Jacob Marber at the end of their train journey and reached the Institute. After that, things dragged majorly and didn't pick up until the last 25% or so. I found myself getting less and less interested in picking the story back up during that entire middle portion, even though there were still a lot of lore being explained and revealed at that part. That brings me to the next point...

Overwhelming details - I don't usually shy away from expansive books with lots of world-building and lore and characters. I usually love them. But it does take a lot of finesse to be able to craft that kind of world without completely losing your reader in the ocean of details, which I think this book was just very slightly off the mark here. It got to a point where I was so overwhelmed with details that I read the ending with only about a 75% understanding of what was going on. I think important parts of the world building only creates a deeper impression when I actually see things in action, rather than being told. It works the same way like in classes: you often learn things better when you experience it hands-on rather than just listening to your teacher talk about it. Same idea here.

Scattered questions but no central hook - This book creates a lot of mystery around certain things right from the get-go, including but not limited to: What are the Talents? What kind of powers do they have? How do they exist? What is the Institute? What is Jacob Marber's purpose? The problem lies however in the fact that there isn't one Big Question/Mystery that we are trying to find the answer to. It's like playing a game with many side quests but kinda seem like they're pushing you towards the endgame, but you have absolutely no idea what the bigger objective of everything is. I was interested enough in these little questions to keep going but I kept wondering what was the bigger point of it all. Because you don't know the Big Question overarching everything, you also don't really have that build-up of tension leading to the book's climax.

POV shifts at the worst times - This isn't unique to this book but it does this thing that is becoming a pet peeve. I don't mind multiple POVs in a book and usually can handle it. I don't even mind following multiple groups of characters going around doing different things in different places. What I take issue with is when one group of characters we've been following for the past 2 chapters suddenly land themselves in an imminently dangerous situation, e.g. they spot Jacob Marber coming towards them, then the chapter ends and the next one shifts POV to the other group of characters. It's not only frustrating for me the reader that the chapter ends on a cliffhanger, but also terrible for building up tension because now that I have to spend another 2 or 3 chapters with another group of characters, by the time we cut back to the original group that had been facing the danger, I've completely forgotten what it's all about so whatever happens subsequently barely feels tense or exciting to me. Sometimes, but not all the time, this book does a worse version of this where when we cut back to the original group, we find out that the danger that they had been facing in the cliffhanger actually wasn't that dangerous after all, so it was basically a pointless cliffhanger that was just there to add cheap tension for no good reason.

Writing felt a little rough around the edges - Honestly, the writing wasn't bad in itself. It was certainly engaging at some points, but I did feel like there were parts that felt a bit repetitive or overdramatic. Another round of editing might have been enough to improve this part.

So having spent a whole long review expounding on what I didn't like about the book, I would just end by saying it's not entirely bad. I really did like the premise of it and the world has a lot of potential. The writing won me over in the beginning as well, though the other issues crept up along the way. The book started off being about 4 stars in the beginning, and then dropped to 3 stars in the middle bits especially after our characters got to the Institute, before climbing up to about a 3.25 or 3.5 again by the ending.

Also like, what the heck happened to Eliza??? I was rooting for her so much in Ch 1 and fully expected to at least get a glimpse of her by the end but there was absolutely nothing? Please don't tell me that she's just out of the story like that because I would be pretty pissed. Why spend the whole effort of introducing her so intimately in Ch 1 but then not have her turn up again forever?

This book was possibly too ambitious. It tries to check off a lot of boxes, with historical urban fantasy setting, magical wizarding type school, world trotting adventures and more. As a result it is one tome of a book, but I think its ambition is ultimately its biggest problem. It is very obvious that J.M. Miro has a wild imagination that drives this work. The problem is that wild imagination ends up jumping around so much that it is very hard to get a grip of the overarching narrative that is trying to be presented. Some plot lines end up disappearing down odd dead ends without proper resolution, and the main plot gets lost in some of the sub plots from time to time. It is certainly an interesting and entertaining read, although some of its meandering tendencies slow it down in unfortunate ways. Ultimately it is book of great ambition, that shows a lot of potential. I would be intrigued to see where a more restrained and focused work from this author would take me.

3.5 Dark, gothic, but was too long and the second half rambled somewhat.

This book was good. That said, my interest waxed and waned. There were some moments that I really loved, and others that felt torturous.

Similarly, to read a 700 page book to only have the conclusion be a set up for a sequel angers me. It feels like going out for a meal, being filled to satisfaction and then the waiter telling me that I HAVE TO get dessert. Let me choose to eat dessert! I just spent a ton of money on my meal.

Same with this book: 700 pages is a lot of time to spend with a story and have very little conclusion and most of the action happen in the last 20 pages.