Review: The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey

Now, there’s horror that is scary, and there’s horror that is stomach-churning. This first volume in the Monstrumologist series is both. It deals, by means of supposed nineteenth century journals, with an infestation of anthropophagi in a peaceful nineteenth century New England town.

The journals were written by one Will Henry, who at the time of this first story, is twelve years old and living with, and as apprentice to, the monstrumologist of the series title: Doctor Pellinore Warthrop. The story opens with the arrival at the doctor’s home of a late night caller with a strange delivery: a dead anthropophagus, still attached to the body of the young girl on whom it had been feeding. Strange late night visitors bearing bizarre packages are not uncommon, we are told, but this particular arrival excites more interest than usual and the doctor immediately sets about examining the find, whilst Will takes notes. What follows is the first of many minute descriptions of these beasts, their gore-bespattered rows of teeth, the gut-wrenching odour which exudes from their every pore and the barbed claws ‘as sharp as a hypodermic and as hard as diamonds’. And you know then that this is no book for the faint-hearted.

So this is the story of a reclusive doctor and his young assistant and their battle to rid New England of a pod of anthrophagi. Well, yes. And no. It is also a coming of age tale. Will has come to live with the doctor after his parents were killed in a fire. He is alone, as the doctor is also, and as the quest to discover how the anthrophagi arrived in New England and how to destroy them unfolds, so Will comes to understand who he is and what the doctor means to him.

And the doctor too, has his own personal angle to the quest, and at this point, it seems, the book becomes very much a product of its period. For Pellinore Warthrop is the son of a monstrumologist, and when the anthropophagi turn out to be connected in some way to his father, Warthrop knows that only he can finish the business. Is it fanciful of me to see a reflection here of a war started by one US President and re-opened by his son? I understand that it is all too easy, post 9-11, to read references to the war on terror into fantasy fiction, but whether conscious or not, the similarities here were too marked for this reader to ignore.

A multi-layered book, then? Yes.  And perhaps one that is a little too sophisticated for its 13+ target audience. The protagonist may only be twelve, but the writing style and language are true to its nineteenth century journal conceit. The ghastliness of the monsters is described with exquisitely literary quasi-nineteenth century prose. Will that appeal to readers more familiar with, say Darren Shan? I’m not sure. But more sophisticated readers will love having more to get their teeth into!

The Monstrumologist: The Terror Beneath by Rick Yancey, published by Simon & Shuster, October 2009, £6.99