Kay's Korner
This past week, I completed the final project to finish out the last of my assignments this semester. All I have left to worry about are finals.
Unfortunately, I do not usually worry about exams at all, and have instead opted to start re-reading a book in the hopes of actually finishing out the series this time.
The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey has been one of my favorite books for many years. I read it for the first time when I was in junior high school, and bought a copy several years later to re-read. The Monstrumologist is the first in a series of four books, and I was enthralled with it, but didn’t manage to get my hands on the rest of the series until a few Christmases ago. I never felt I had the time to read them, though, so they have gone untouched. I’ve picked up the first over and over again to refresh my memory before finally reading the others, but I always find some reason to stop before beginning the second.
Hopefully this time I will follow through, though I have the feeling I will find an excuse to not.
This book is far removed from the genres I usually enjoy. It is very much a horror novel, which I didn’t really appreciate until recently. Unlike movies, horror books can’t rely on jump scares and gore. They have to create scenes in the readers’ mind to unsettle their readers. That’s what makes this book for me. There are plenty of grotesqueries, what with the main conflict being how to outsmart man-eating monsters, but there are small, everyday monsters that people overlook highlighted in The Monstrumologist as well. Those, I find, are the most unsettling. There are completely fictitious monsters, but there are many creatures that he created that could plausibly exist, simply going unnoticed because they are small and humans would assume that they are not a threat.
It also seems to assert the idea that because these man-eating beasts are not particularly intelligent and are only following their instincts, they are not the monsters that the characters need to fight against. Of course, they still do.
They have to eradicate the infestation of anthropophagi — which literally translates to cannibals — from New England before they begin to climb to the top of the food chain and cause countless deaths along the way. Even though the humans do win in the end, there are many casualties.
Because the creatures are not indigenous to the Americas, the main character, Will Henry, and his mentor Doctor Warthrop, must figure out how they came to be there in the first place. They eventually learn that the doctor’s father brought the monsters in an attempt to selectively breed them to use as weapons.
Warthrop struggles with this revelation, and begins to believe his father to be the true monster after concluding that he would have had to hide the creatures and keep them sustained on meals of humans for some time.
Then there is a positively psychopathic hunter who helps to entrap and kill the creatures, but is more than willing to sacrifice others to do so.
Henry begins to wonder whether the anthropophagi are the real monsters in their midst, and no one can really blame him.
It almost brings to mind the story of Frankenstein’s monster, which became violent after being shunned by his creator.
Of course, the anthropophagi are not nearly as intelligent as Frankenstein’s monster and are not to blame for their actions, but the idea in both novels is that the lack of a proper caretaker is what led to such violence and bloodshed.
In any case, it is a book that I have always enjoyed, with plenty of twists and turns, and I hope to finally be able to finish the series in the next few weeks.
Kaylee Rush is a staff writer for The Snyder News. Coments on this article can be made at lifesyles@thesnydernews.com