Ordinary Monsters, by JM Miro

Ordinary Monsters by JM Miro was an intense however extremely enjoyable read with a whopping total 672 pages, holding a gripping and very well written story line. 

This is a new series about a group of children called Talents who are different and out of the ordinary when it comes to the rest of the world. The first book specifically follows two young boys: Marlowe and Charlie, and their journey to the Cairndale Institute. Here, a corrupt older Talent, Henry Berghast looks after and helps train younger Talents from across the world. However, not all is as it seems when it comes to Marlowe’s talent, and Henry has a big secret he is trying to protect. 

Throughout the book you meet characters you grow to love, like Alice Quicke, a young woman who was brought in to help locate young talents - including Marlowe and Charlie - and Agent Frank Coulton, an agent for Cairndale who actually suggested Alice for the job. You also come face to face with Jacob Marber, an older talent who was turned to the dark side by our antagonist, the Drughr. It is up to the children and everyone at Cairndale to protect a precious artefact and to work out who the real villain is. 

This story is a Victorian sci-fi and is written extremely well. JM Miro has been able to merge two worlds that shouldn’t necessarily pair well together perfectly. The Victorian era focuses mainly across America, London, and Edinburgh, and the descriptions paint a clear picture in your head of the picturesque views in Edinburgh and the dark and dingy alleys in London. However, he has managed to add a dystopian vibe to the writing which opened up even more doorways for the story to unfold. It created settings and descriptions of the unknown creatures that became ever more eerie. 

In the past I have read a handful of books with multiple narrators, and I never had many issues, but at the beginning of this book I found myself finding it slightly more difficult to read. Just as I would get totally invested in one story line and the chapter was reaching a climax, it would end, and the next chapter would be a different story line and I would have to start the whole process again! But when the story lines all merged together, I found it all fit together perfectly and I didn’t encounter any more issues like that. 

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a historical read with a sci-fi twist. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I think the series overall has an immense amount of potential. Once past the narrative issues early on, it was a seamless and easy read. The style was beautiful and was a merge of poetry and fiction (in my opinion anyway) and JM Miro really made you love the characters. I cannot wait for the release of the rest of the series over the next few years and I am interested to read more of JM Miro’s work. 

- Phoebe

Hardback, £17.99.

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