Curse of the Wendigo by Rick Yancey

Genre: YA horror/ historical
Pages: 448 (hardcover)
Published: 2010 by Simon & Schuster
Recommended for: fans of horror and Gothic novels

Synopsis:
While attempting to disprove that homo vampiris, the vampire, could not possibly exist, Dr. Warthrop is asked by his former fiancee to rescue her husband from the Wendigo, a creature that starves even as it gorges itself on human flesh, which has snatched him in the Canadian wilderness. Although Warthrop also considers the Wendigo to be fictitious, he relents and rescues her husband from death and starvation, and then sees the man transform into a Wendigo. Can the doctor and Will Henry hunt down the ultimate predator, who, like the legendary vampire, is neither living nor dead, whose hunger for human flesh is never satisfied? This second book in The Monstrumologist series explores the line between myth and reality, love and hate, genius and madness. 

My Take:

Somehow I always take it for granted that a YA novel could not possibly scare me.  The Monstrumologist proved that little theory wrong, and now its sequel has reminded me that I am, on occasion, a total cry-baby-sniffle-head.  

The Curse of the Wendigo is very nearly as nauseatingly gory and compulsively readable as the first book.  We learn more the eccentric-- okay, downright bizarre-- Dr. Warthrop, Will Henry's guardian and master whose science involves the study of deadly creatures whom are rarely recorded in most nature history books, apparently because simply very few people survive encounters with them.  Will and the doctor trek across the freezing and isolated Canadian tundra, searching for John Chanler, an old colleague of the doctor's who was as much his worst enemy as his best friend.  The natives swear Chanler has been taken by something very evil and very old-- the Wendigo, a terrible legendary creature who starves for living flesh and was once, legend has it, human.  Dr. Warthrop is a skeptic despite his profession and is convinced Chanler is merely lost.  To keep it spoiler-free, Will and the doctor end up at a society meeting for the Order of Monstrumologists in New York, where the gruesome deaths which took place in the Canadian tundra seem to be occurring as well.  


I liked that real-life figures appear so clearly in both books: we had Jack the Ripper in the first book, and now we have Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and many of the 'real-life' inspirations for his novel: there's a gung-ho monstrumologist named von Helrung, and even a mention of a doctor Seward.  We meet a Mina Harker-like character, too, but telling you who would be a big spoiler. ;)  I liked also that we finally have a female character with a set of balls (so to speak), because even if it is the 19th century, I always like to read about strong chic characters who don't swoon at the mention of monstrous nasties (of which this book contains quite a lot).  

All in all, this second book in the Monstrumologist series had all the gory trappings and delectably addictive, yet wordy, prose of a classic gothic horror novel.  I'd reread it for the scene with the Mongolian Death Worm alone.

Cover: 5/5 (my OCD likes how it matches the first book)

Premise: 5/5

Characters: 4/5

Plot: 5/5

Overall Rating: 5/5 

The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey

Genre: YA horror/ historical
Pages: 454 (paperback)
Published: 2010 by Simon & Schuster
Recommended for: horror and Victorian readers, readers with a strong stomach

Summary:
These are the secrets I have kept. This is the trust I never betrayed. But he is dead now and has been for nearly ninety years, the one who gave me his trust, the one for whom I kept these secrets. The one who saved me . . . and the one who cursed me.
 
So starts the diary of Will Henry, orphan and assistant to a doctor with a most unusual specialty: monster hunting. In the short time he has lived with the doctor, Will has grown accustomed to his late night callers and dangerous business. But when one visitor comes with the body of a young girl and the monster that was eating her, Will's world is about to change forever. The doctor has discovered a baby Anthropophagus—a headless monster that feeds through a mouth in its chest—and it signals a growing number of Anthropophagi. Now, Will and the doctor must face the horror threatening to overtake and consume our world before it is too late. 

My Take:

I was excited to read The Monstrumologist, because I'd heard that it was a Victorian YA where monsters are only too real merciless killing machines and they certainly don't sparkle.  I wasn't disappointed in the least-- this is the gory story of one adventure in the life of Will Henry, a twelve year old orphan who in 1888 became apprenticed to a doctor of the world's gristliest profession: monstrumology, or the science and hunting of monsters.  The book is immediately entrancing, what with its smart prose, sprinklings of humor, and gruesome mystery.  If you don't have a strong stomach, though, I would recommend either scanning over the goriest paragraphs (found myself doing that a couple of times), or leaving this one altogether, because Rick Yancey might just have Stephan King beat in the gross-out factor.   


The story centers around the sleepy New England town of New Jerusalem, a town whose biggest curiosity has long been Dr. Warthrop, the suspicious and fanatic monstrumologist who practices his unusual science with the help of Will Henry, his 'indispensable' apprentice.  When a gravedigger comes calling in the middle of the night, Will is disturbed from a good night's sleep by an urgent issue which requires the doctor's immediate attention-- and something so utterly disturbing, I almost put the book down early on and deemed it just too gruesome.  Turns out the graveyard of this sleepy New England town is home to a pod of Anthropophagi-- terrible, man-eating monsters mentioned briefly throughout Greek myth.  Will and the doctor are in a race against time and the feeding habits of the little-known, deadly Anthropophagi, trying to figure out exactly how the monsters arrived from their native Africa to America and tracking down the disturbing history of their not-so-accidental migration, before the brutal monsters strike again and make victims of the rest of the town.
  

The Monstrumologist would make such a good horror movie.  The effects would have to be really superb to keep the Anthropophagi from seeming ludicrous and corny, I think, but the creepiness of the monsters' hunting ground and the characters would translate perfectly to the silver screen.  The characters of Will Henry and Dr. Warthrop are perfectly written-- I love their love-hate relationship.  Though the monstrumologist always says Will Henry s 'indispensable' to him as an assistant, he really doesn't treat the poor kid that way, and the fact remains that Will blames the doctor at least partially for his parents' gruesome death.  My favorite character, though, has to be Dr. Kearns, an ex-surgeon from Britain who hunts monsters like the Anthropophagi (Kearns calls them 'poppies') for sport, and who the monstrumologist writes to for help upon discovering the monster infestation.  Kearns seems very charismatic at first-- if more than a little unhinged, but we soon realize he's a man who values human life very little... less than the thrill he gets from seeking out and killing monsters.  He also adds some humor to the book, with his sinister cynicism, bluntness, and weird assuming of unnecessary 'code-names'.  And there is a Jack the Ripper tie-in-- I never squealed out loud when I realized it.  


The pace of the book can seem kind of slow between pages 80 through maybe 150, but things speed right up around the time of the next monster attack and Kearns's arrival.  It can also seem a little wordy sometimes for a YA novel, but that is to be expected for a Victorian journal, which is basically what the story of Will Henry is.  I really enjoyed this one, but didn't realize I was enjoying it until maybe page 300-- it was kind of an odd read in that respect.  Just a FYI: The Monstrumologist won the Printz Honor Award in 2010, so that's cool and, I think, an award well-deserved.

Cover: 5/5 

Premise: 4/5 

Characters: 5/5 

Plot: 4/5 

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

Bonechiller

 BONECHILLER, BY GRAHAM MCNAMEE  published September 2008  304 pages (hardcover edition)
OVERALL RATING: 5/5
Synopsis: Bonechiller is a supernatural horror thriller set in the Big Empty of Canada in a little town called Harvest Cove-- aka Nowhere.  The town's only inhabitants are the narrator, Danny, and his father, who've been on the run ever since his mother died of a brain tumor, the resident army base soldiers and their brats... and an ancient monster who has been stalking and killing teenagers in the frozen ice and snow since before written record.  The Windigo is a terrible, cannibalistic beast well-known to the Ojibwas (Native Americans) of Northern Canada.  It's all but impossible to kill, impenetrable to bullets, and it's glacier-bound lair is a place of unimaginable terror.  When Danny and his brainy friend Howie are selected by the Windigo as its newest victims, they find that disturbing changes begin to take place in their bodies: suddenly they're insusceptible to cold and they have nightly, all-too-realistic nightmares where they are hunted in dreams by the monstrous Windigo.  Even during the day the two are constantly haunted by the call, an irrestible pull to the arctic tundra where the Windigo patiently awaits their arrival.  Time is running out and when Howie ends up in the hospital, Danny is forced to take a final stand against the creature along with his sort-of-girlfriend Ash-- an army brat and five times as skilled a boxer as any of the guys-- and Howie's pyromaniac brother, Pike.  Pike has a crazy plan which just maybe could end the Windigo's ancient reign of terror and save Danny and Howie from an icy grave-- or else leave the four friends just four more skeletons in the Windigo's cave.


Halloween is just around the corner and everyone is busy seeking out scary stories and novels.  Bonechiller is a book I've read many times-- because it's just that good.  The first time I read this book, I just could not put it down.  It's part psychological thriller and part horror-flick style monster tale, the cold northern setting making the book slightly reminescent of 30 Days of Night.  The eerie, shadowy legends of the Windigo are a welcome change in a genre where vampires and werewolves often seem to have the run of the place.(Not that I don't love them both!) 
Bonechiller has just enough emotional depth to make the story feel very, very real and terrifying.  My favorite character by far is Ash-- she's a tough girl like no other I've read about and the romance between her and Danny makes it easy to root for them.  But it is the descriptions of Danny's long trudge home through 30 below temperatures and miles and miles of silent, windswept tundra and the apparition of the monster itself which will have you shivering beneath your warm covers at night, carefully closing the blinds of your window for fear of what you might glimpse beyond the glass.  Bonechiller is the perfect book for Halloween and anytime you just feel like reading something exceptionally creepy.
Graham McNamee is also the author of the Silence of the Lambs-esque debut novel, Accerlation, which I have yet to get my hands on yet.