The Monstrumologist
by Rick Yancey
Simon & Schuster, 2009
Young Adult
448 pages
A man and a boy, locked in a crucible of fear. One Pellinore Warthrop, “Doctor of Philosophy,” and one William J. Henry, assistant, possibly apprentice, the only line of defense against an unholy savagery that waits below the cemetery.
This book dives deep into adult imagery from the very beginning, describing bloody and horrifying situations that evolve into true soul-shaking terror. But the brutally raw descriptions in this book are set in counterpoint to the honesty of emotion that is conveyed by the characters. The empathy Will finds for his often cold master grows from the discovery of a childhood letter from the Doctor to his own apparently uncaring father. When there is a creature of indescribable horror, dead, hanging in the cellar, Yancey raises the hairs on our necks by taking us for a ride in Will’s runaway imagination.
A haggard old man shows up at the door with a woman’s body, entwined with that of a monster, partially devoured, found while robbing a grave. They rush to the cemetery, and are attacked by mob of the creatures, what the Dr. Warthrop names Anthropophagi. Only two of the three make it out alive. The second act begins with a consideration of the ethics of mercy killing.
We discover that Will Henry’s father, once assistant to the doctor until his untimely death, was only recently replaced by his son. As the two pay a visit to an asylum in a nearby town, Dr. Warthrop’s own father then becomes a player in the drama. A ship captain tells of bringing an entire family of anthropophagi to the new world under the direction of James Warthrop. The Doctor chooses not to alert the authorities.
That is the second of Warthrop’s mistakes. The first assumption, about the size and hunger of the nest of monsters, shows how conceit can bear a heavy price, costing the life of the old man. His second bad choice costs the lives of an entire family.
Monster hunter Dr. John Kearns shows up and gives it to the doctor straight – they didn’t migrate here, they were brought here by his father. He had been “obsessed” with occult methods to avoid death… could James Warthrop still be alive? Was it a confederate plot gone awry? Or was misdirection a ploy to divert suspicion from Kearns’ own “raise and release” program? In any case, the leader of the man-eaters seems to have something personal against the doctor. She’s been leading her clan right to his doorstep.
The Slaughter Ring
After the merciless slaughter of a family by the beasts leaving poor Malachi Stinnet without a family, Jack Kearns, (or Dr. Cody, or John J.J. Schmidt,) and Warthrop then eliminate the nest with the help of the Police Constable and few deputized villagers, making use of grenades and a ring of fire called The Maori Protocol. Will and Malachi kill a younger anthropophagus themselves. After the smoke clears, they notice that the matriarch is not among the dead.
They follow the remaining monsters down into their lair where the brood’s mother lays waiting in the dark. Someone dies.
We are very much like them: indiscriminate killers, ruled by drives little acknowledged and less understood, mindlessly territorial and murderously jealous—the only significant difference being that they have yet to master our expertise in hypocrisy, the gift of our superior intellect that enables us to slaughter one another in droves, more often than not under the auspices of an approving God!
Yancey draws parallels between the three boys who have lost their families, specifically focusing on each of their relationships with their father. Will, the Stinnett boy, and the Doctor Warthrop himself. Malachi’s family was murdered by monsters. Will lost his father in a fire, his body taken by a monster of another sort, a parasite. Warthrop tells of how his father was found naked, curled into the fetal position, quite mindless. Will now has to come to grips with the fact that his mother despised the relationship between the doctor and his father, and that his father seemed to worship a man whose work is responsible for his parents’ terrifying death as well as Malachi’s.
Hinting that one of the characters may be Jack the Ripper seemed silly and extraneous to me, but the characters were all well-rounded, with both good and bad evident in each, and the story is enthralling.
I could almost call this splatter horror for teens. It is quite like the experience of reading H.P. Lovecraft, but the many gross-out scenes do not feel gratuitous, and the deep and thick description of setting and the slow intense build-up for each scene’s climax is a recipe for the truly frightening. Will Henry always seems to reflect compassion and a desire for the happiness and well-being of others, despite his blood drenched and despair-filled environment.
”It feels like a dream,” he said after a pensive pause. He was looking at the body lying at his feet. “Not this. My life before this, before them. You would think the opposite would be true. It’s very strange, Will.”
Another Sleepless Night
Because:
1. I was up till the wee hours unable to put the book down, and
2. I was scared to death of what might be lurking in the pit of darkness under my bed after reading The Monstrumologist.
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