Book Review: Monster by A. Lee Martinez
Monster
A. Lee Martinez
Orbit, 2009
ISBN 0316041262
Hardcover (ARC)
I am not certain if the following could be called a review of a book or a reaction to a book. Until opening this book, the assumption was, rather naively I now realize, that after over a half century of reading, I had read every genre of book ever published. However, nothing I had read prepared me for this book.
The story opens at Food Plus Mart, a convenience store where a bit of a disturbance is taking place. A Yeti, as in those mythical creatures associated with the Himalayas, is in the storeās freezer, eating ice cream, an entire carton at a time.
Judy and Dave, the two clerks on duty, debate what to do. Judy goes to the storeās office to call Animal Control. Dave goes back stocking shelves. After the phone call, Judy goes outside for a smoke break. Sheās there when Monster arrives. Heās a free-lance contractor for the Cryptobiological Containment and Rescue Services. Heās looks normal, except that he has blue hair and skin. Both change every day, and Monster has no idea what color he will be until he wakes up each day.
Anyway, he walks into the store, brains the Yeti with a bat, draws a circle around the creature, and adds some strange looking letters around the circle. In minutes the Yeti disappears, leaving only a āsmall fluffy rockā inside the circle.
From this beginning, the story becomesā¦. My reaction is that I had read the script for a fantasy video game between good guys and bad guys, one that includes things, events, morphing creatures, and violence that make the opening scene as described above as tame and sane as a āDick and Janeā reader.
This book is the sixth one written by Martinez, a native Texan who is described as a fantasy and science fiction author. If asked, I would have said that I had read books that could be described as fantasies or science fiction. However, this book took this reader through things that I never conceived could exist, and truly hope that they do not exist, outside the mind of the author.
Reviewed by Bo Parker, June 2010.
June 30, 2010
Tags: dark fantasy, humor, Orbit Posted in: Guest Reviews
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