Not For the Breakfast Table

The Monstrumologist by Rick Yance
New York : Simon & Schuster BFYR, c2009.
434 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.

This book is a Printz honor book - and it is a compelling read. This book would be a great step up for fans of the Cirque du Freak series. There is lot (and I mean lots) of gore and bloodshed. Because most of the violence is committed by monsters that are like humanoid great white sharks, it is more fantastical and less offensive than simple murder and mayhem stories.

The book is well-plotted and conceived, cleverly nested as a story from the late 1800s as conveyed in the journals of an old man who has passed away in a retirement home.

The novel has also features a likable orphan protagonist and uses many of the stock in trade tricks of Gothic horror - gloomy midnights in graveyards, basement labs, and underground lairs where the last monsters must be hunted. The novel has some creative touches in references to the civil war period and to the gruesome habits of parasites (an interesting comparison could be made to Peeps in this regard.)