Review: Monster

Monster by Michael Grant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A follow-up to Gone at last?

YES. PLEASE.

Four years after Michael Grant seemingly ended the series with the sixth and final novel Light, here beginneth a new trilogy that takes the FAYZ and its alien virus and all its ramifications and brings them to a more global stage. Well, so far a lot of the action is confined to the US, and especially to California (there's a lot of Bay Area action scenes, including one of the most inventive spins yet on Golden Gate Bridge destruction), but there are sprinklings of worldwide action as more pieces of the space rocks that first brought us the gaiaphage are starting to show up around our planet. Though Grant's indicated a few times in recent months that he might be quitting the YA biz, the events of this book are only the first taste of things to come, so I'm still hoping that he brings us Villain and Hero to wrap up this new story arc.



I was a little surprised by how much the early information about this book kept changing. First there was the working title Shade Darby, then the assertion that Dekka would be the protagonist. Elements of both of these show up in the final product, with Shade being one of several new characters through whose POV we witness the apocalyptic horror (and body horror) with which Grant gifts us like back in the old days of Plague, especially, and Dekka being the sole original-series character whose POV we get here. Our other major POV characters are Justin, who's got a seriously monstrous streak that helps give this book its name; Tom Peaks, who to my mind feels like a mashup of Nicholas Lea's best-known characters, Alex Krycek from The X Files and Tom Foss from Kyle XY; Cruz, who is genderfluid (said to be "multiple choice in a true/false world") and becomes very good friends with Shade and her ex, Malik; and Armo, whose Oppositional Defiant Disorder is, if I'm not mistaken, something he shares with Grant himself. There are so many characters to follow here, and it's clear that Grant focuses more on some than others - Shade, Cruz, and Dekka get the most attention, I think. But even though not every POV character gets equal page time, that doesn't terribly undermine the book's central theme - the extremely blurred lines between monster, villain, and hero. No Golden or Silver Age comic book stuff here, kids.

The original Gone series, dark though it was, proved very foundational for me as a YA reader - and also as a YA writer. I'm sure there are many who would side-eye me for saying this, but a lot of Grant's old heroes and villains - especially Sam, Quinn, Edilio, Dekka, Sanjit, and even Caine and Diana - have been quite influential on me. Monster takes the darkness of the old series up a few more notches, really ratcheting up the psychological scare and body horror factors. And also the in-universe bigotry factor. It's nothing new for this series - racism, in particular, flew thick and fast coming from the original series' worst villains. A lot of our heroes in this book have to put up with aggressions both micro and macro - Dekka hearing people frequently talk about her "the black lesbian," reductive as that is, Cruz having to put up with a ton of transphobia (including repeated use of her deadname, which is still her legal one) and getting asked what she's got in her pants, etc. There's also inclusion of mental illness among the good guys and the bad both, though, like I said, the lines between good and evil are extremely blurred here. Think Netflix Marvel as opposed to ABC Marvel (not that Agents of SHIELD doesn't blur the lines a lot itself.)

Monster isn't quite the five-star read I was hoping for, but then again, I only gave Gone four stars too and came to super-appreciate the series as it went on. That said, though, it really harks back to the days when Gone and sequels were among the darkest books in YA, and this one's even more thought-provoking than ever. I bet there are many who'll give it a miss for precisely those reasons, but that's okay. Everyone has their own preferences.

Oh, and one more stray observation...that scene where Shade and Cruz sing along to some good old Tom Petty. "I Won't Back Down." Never let it be said that Grant's good guys and gals and enbies don't have great taste in music.

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