If there ever was a book perfectly suited to Halloween reading, this is it. It is so scary and dark and violent that we’re ignoring the fact that it’s technically a Young Adult book, and we’re shelving it in Science Fiction. Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t put it down. It gave me the shivers; it gave me nightmares; I stayed up until one in the morning to finish it. For anyone who can handle the descriptions of what the monsters do, it would make a fantastic, very creepy read-aloud.
Set in New England in the 1880s, The Monstrumologist follows Will Henry, a 12-year-old apprentice to the area’s only Monstrumologist. To the skeptics his master, Warthrop, says he is either a doctor or a philosopher, but being a Monstrumologist is really a combination of both. When a grave robber brings them the corpse of an adult Anthropophagi (a headless monster mentioned by Herodotus and Shakespeare - which says a lot about the tone and caliber of this book), Will and Warthrop embark on a mission to rid the area of an infestation of these gruesome creatures.
The story is presented as if Yancey found Will’s journals while researching his other Young Adult series (the Alfred Kropp Adventures), and I hope this means that it’s the start of a series. I’ll save them to read every October. ~Lillian