Ordinary Monsters (The Talents Trilogy, #1) by J.M. Miro
Published by Flatiron Books
Publication date: June 7, 2022
Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Historical
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In the world of hardcore readers (yes, that is a thing), there is something called a book hangover. It’s when you read a book so good that your mind can’t detach after you finish, leaving you with a period of time where everything you read is just wrong. Very wrong. I’m in that odd, frustrating space right now thanks to J.M. Miro’s Ordinary Monsters, a fantasy novel set in 1800s Great Britain. Before you ask, I have NO idea why the fantasy has become my new go-to reading, but feel free to weigh in if you have opinions.
The cast of Ordinary Monsters is disparate and global, but centers around one group—children with unique gifts, and one theme, protecting them from a dark power wanting to harm them. To that end, there are two investigators, Coulton and Alice, who travel the world finding these children and bringing them to the Cairndale Institute in Scotland. Charlie and Marlowe step onto the stage of this world as the two most recent children sought. Charlie is found in a Mississippi jail, a biracial 16-year-old who’s been sentenced to death and put to death, but won’t stay dead. Marlowe is an undersized 8-year-old found as an infant on a train and raised by a giant of a woman in a circus. He’s been incorporated into the act now that he’s old enough to communicate because when he concentrates his skin glows with a blue light. What no one knows is that when it does, that same skin can either heal or kill.
Getting Charlie and Marlowe to Cairndale provides the first glimpses of some of the darker forces in Ordinary Monsters. For as much as Coulton and Alice are trying to get them to safety there are others trying to stop them. When the two boys meet in London, they bond as the only two friends either of them has ever had. Their group expands further when they reach the institute and meet Komako, who commands dust, and Ribs, who can make herself invisible.
Miro uses the relative safety of Cairndale to leave the children and delve into the past and the rest of the world they inhabit. A world where one doctor, a gatekeeper, a London widow, and two investigators face off against a former student and a host of other creatures trying to shear the fabric of this world from the next.
At 672 pages the novel is a chunkster, but Miro builds an extraordinary world within in its pages. So much so that I read the book in four days (and only made it that long because I slowed down towards the end to make it last). This is absorptive reading of the best kind, thanks not just to Miro’s imagination, but his gift with words. The combination makes magic on the page and Ordinary Monsters something special for fantasy lovers.
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I loved this book so much. I have been thinking about it a lot since I read it in mid-summer. I do hope there is a sequel.
It’s a trilogy!! I’m so excited, but hate the waiting. I would almost rather learn about a series after it’s finished so I can dive and stay buried in that world.
Sounds awesome. It’s on my list. I’m well acquainted with book hangover! I’ve been getting more into fantasy this year too. I need the escapism!
Yes! Reading is my escape naturally, but I seem to need more, like completely leaving this world. Which sounds really dark, but I know you know what I mean!