Monster by A. Lee. Martinez

by Chriss Cornish published: March 6, 2010 No Comments

This Book Is About

Meet Monster. Meet Judy. Two humans who don’t like each other much, but together must fight dragons, fire-breathing felines, trolls, Inuit walrus dogs, and a crazy cat lady for the future of the universe.

Monster runs a pest control agency. He’s overworked and has domestic troubles. Judy works the night shift at the local Food Plus Mart. But when Judy finds a Yeti in the freezer aisle eating all the Rocky Road, her life collides with Monster’s in a rather alarming fashion. Because Monster doesn’t catch raccoons; he catches the things that go bump in the night. Things like ogres, trolls, and dragons. And his girlfriend from hell really is from Hell.

My Thoughts On This Book

First of all, the cover of Monster is really cool; it looks like a yellow pages ad.

Monster is a comic urban fantasy, which I’ve never seen before since most current novels in the genre are series stories about investigating the supernatural. It’s a fun read with a lot of interesting mythical/cryptobiological creatures. The story starts off with yeti in a supermarket icecream freezer and progresses to using jelly beans to lure trolls out of a closet and battling walrus-dogs in an all-night diner.

My favorite example is the encounter with the sphinx. It sits on the car hood asking riddles and starts taking chunks out of the vehicle for each wrong answer or hesitation. At one point it asks, “If train A leaves the station…” Made me laugh out loud. I always knew that was a stupid riddle and not an actual math problem.

Unlike most current urban fantasy (but like de Lint-era urban fantasy), Monster is in third person. The narration moves between Judy, Monster, and a few other characters but it doesn’t jump around too much.

Neither Monster nor Judy are particularly nice, or happy, people. Despite that, they’re not unpleasant to read about and you actually relate to them and care what happens. And the ending doesn’t have that oh-everyone’s-totally-changed-for-the-better-and-are-the-best-of-buddies resolution that’s so common, which was a pleasant and unexpected surprise.

Monster also the most far-out suggestion ever for what the purpose of the universe is. It’s worth reading just for that.

The story is well paced and the writing is good. However, I think Monster must have been rushed to print a bit because it could have used one more editing run (in my opinion); there are a few rough transitions and awkward places. Not enough, though, to spoil or even really hamper the reader’s enjoyment of the book.