THE MONSTRUMOLOGIST By Rick Yancey

    

      If you like dark, different, creepy, atmospheric books, then you will be as much in love with Rick Yancy’s book, THE MONSTRUMOLOGIST as I am. It is a selection upon which I was sorry to close that last page. The next two in the series have just come out this month, and this reader is ready to pounce on them.  There are few books that can be called perfect, but if any deserve that distinction, it’s this first in the Monstrumologist series.

     Will Henry is an overworked, underfed, under rested assistant to the monstrumologist, Dr. Pellinore Warthrop. Will’s allegiance to this odd man lies in his late father’s pride for working with a man he considered brilliant; and the doctor was the only person who offered to take the boy in after his parents perished in a fire. The boy had seen his parents burn to death (and more than that before the event, but I won’t tell the gruesome details) and many other things boys of twelve should not, so he is wise and mature beyond his years. But Yancey reminds us constantly that he is still a child, and it is these peeks into the vulnerabilities of the youth that is so engaging.

     This first book deals with monsters of folklore, Anthropophagi, or people eaters, who, being headless, wear their eyes in their shoulders and their mouths in their bellies. It’s a proverbial breath of fresh air and a pure delight to read about a forgotten, although terrifying monster in the rash of books about the same handful of otherworldly creatures. The Lycan Librarian won’t spoil things for you by telling you how they reproduce, hunt, or kill their prey — she will allow those details to be related by the book’s author, for nobody else could do a finer job.