Ordinary Monsters

I fell headlong into this one on a plane ride across the country from VA to NV and it didn't disappoint during that flight. I lost my stride when I returned home to the hustle and bustle, but once I picked it up again, a couple months later, I fell right back in as if I never left off. The characters are interesting and varied and often ethically/morally gray–save for the children–who in most cases are just trying to survive what is such a confusing mess of an existence (as far as we're made aware). It's like X-Men meets Harry Potter, with a twist of Lord of the Rings, in a dark and murky Victorian-era, steampunk world where there are gifted children, monsters and dead things and portals that are locked tight to keep these things apart.

My only front of mind criticism here...if I'm comparing this to Harry Potter and the final showdown there...the final showdown here (in Ordinary Monsters) seems so much less earned. Without giving anything away...so much sh&% hits the fan at the end of this first book (in what is going to be a series) that you wonder how much more could possibly go down in some endgame? I remember feeling so much sadness at the end of the Harry Potter series when you see the destruction and the lifeless bodies strewn across the floors of Hogwarts. You knew those characters. You had moments with them–and all of it across a rich and expansive series. However here, in this book, there's a great deal of death and destruction at the end, but a lot of the casualties are of those whom the reader never has the good fortune to meet or develop an attachment. And at one point in the story, one of the main characters (Charlie) says as much when he refers to these other (now dead) people as “nameless talents” or some such almost as a way to tidy up that bit of lazy plot/character development. That's the only thing that sits with me in a weird, unsettling way. Otherwise, I enjoyed this a great deal.