Review: Monstre

Monstre by Duncan Swan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An adaptation of this will be a bigger phenomenon than The Walking Dead.

Jesus Christ.

Where to begin? This was severely rewarding. It was constant chaos. The minute things seem to start forming into a structured story and you finally think it's about to settle down, it doesn't. How beautiful is it that everything keeps going to shit? Lets dissect this for awhile because I need some self-therapy to work this out.

The Large Hadron Collider exists. Scientist are using it to study laws of nature and smash atoms together at accelerated rates. They discovered the "Gods Particle" not too long ago. It is also capable of creating microscopic black holes. A quick google search tells me that there's nothing to worry about, but this thought has followed me for years. Of course, a book where something goes wrong with the LHC is going to fit in the right place for me. It's a puzzle piece I never knew was empty in my soul.

The first person we meet is also our first casualty in a story filled with them. You know the fulfilling feeling you got when you saw Rogue One for the first time - you did, didn't you!?!?! - and you knew everybody was going to die? It was perfect and it was right. They all died in kind of cute ways where you felt bad but in the end, it was alright. NOT IN THIS BOOK. This book has so many changes of direction it was like the car chase in Tintin. You think somebody is going to die, but they don't. We revisit them later and they are still holding on but not for long. When we jump back to the character again, you start to think maybe they actually make it. Wouldn't that be obvious? No. They're all going to die. They're going to die horribly and suddenly and it's going to happen so don't get attached to anybody.

You change perspectives frequently. The story also jumps between time periods. We follow from the day of the accident and half a year later. Some scenes fill you in on plans or things that occurred in the time between. There's a sequel coming so all will be answered. Those perspectives give us one sad story after another. After the LHC explodes, a cloud fills the air and blocks out the sun. As the world plunges into darkness, monsters described as being fifteen feet from nose to the end of the tail with multiple legs and rows and rows of teeth start killing people. The air is corrupted by toxins commonly found in pesticides. Everyone is struggling to escape, but just by being outside everyone is already doomed.

It actually comes out in the lightest part of the story. One of the sections follows a group of marines investigating the disappearance of other marines in the cloud covered area. The monsters come and destroy the team, and the leader has his gas mask ripped off. While recovering, and receiving new orders, he's told that he probably only has days to live. A bus load of people who they traveled with back to the safe zone started with forty six survivors. They end up with around twenty, and then they all die off once they arrive. A scientist we meet in the beginning of the story gets progressively worse and worse. We last see him hooked up to a dialysis machine and told he's done for. There is no hope. Not for anybody. It's futile. It's delicious.

I hate talking about the marines because by saying this is a book with marines in it I don't want to give you *that* idea that it's some type of military ops book fighting extraterrestrial alternate dimensional monsters. No. Listen, there are tons of different characters here. There's scientist, prison inmates, military both current and retired, everyday people, police officers, rapist, neighborhood watch teams. People of all different nationalities. Kids too. Listen, there's some Crossed vibes here. The kids are going to suffer. Nothing good will happen to anybody. Here's an example:

One character, Mason, is fleeing with a convoy of cars. In his vehicle are his wife, daughter, a neighbor, and his neighbor's wife. They are attacked by the Monsters but make it through okay. Mason figures the Monsters wont attack if they are lit up by the flashlights. It's fine until the attacks start up again. The daughter in the backseat, Jessie, tries to reach for her dad and call his name. Then a Monster burst through the back window, slashes Jessie and her mother, rips the neighbor's wife's head clean off, then kills the neighbor. Mason is the last to die, but it's all instantaneous. There's no breathing room in this book.

I would say the longest part of this book revolves around the police officers in America trying to head to NORAD. One has her family with her. There's also a friend named Drew who is an outdoors guy. They get caught up in a trap set by former criminals who steal people's cars, gas, and possessions. They flee, but end up killing two of them. This leads to them being hunted down, without realizing it and leaves us at the end of the book shocked with a CLIFFHANGER ENDING. How could you Duncan Swan?

Remember when The Walking Dead was the show to watch? People were obsessed with it even in an over saturated zombie market. There was initially a rag tag group of characters that you watched die off one by one until it ended up with a core group and they made the show about hiking. I'm looking at you season four. Picture The Walking Dead but without it sucking. Instead of zombies, we have monsters that are actually scary. You have to keep a Game of Thrones level of attachment to these characters too. You experience the coming doom from a variety of perspectives and cities and countries even. I'm in love with this book. I want to time travel back to February and have it be my neurotic valentine.

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