Lorraine Gregory's utterly mesmerising "The Maker of Monsters" follows up her sublime "Mold and the Poison Plot" with a standalone middle grade adventure that is breathtakingly original, and full of deliciously subtle layers of story.
It begins with an ordinary day in the life of Brat, a put-upon young lad working for a harsh taskmaster in a windswept old castle full of monsters.
Literally full of monsters. For Brat's surly master fancies himself as a would-be Dr Moreau / Dr Frankenstein, constructing fantastic beasts by mixing together different species.
Is he an insane genius? Brat seems to think that underneath his stony exterior his master has a heart, and as we delve deeper into the book we discover why the old man is so fixated on this terrible obsession to create a perfect beast. As a weapon of vengeance.
Let's take a look at how the book opens...
As much as this is Brat's story, it is also his master's and what we both liked about this book is that both of us came away with different opinions on who the most important character was. For C, Brat was the diminutive hero trying to gently wrestle his master away from his obsessional experimentation, to restore his humanity and give him back his soul.
For me it was the master himself, this dark brooding figure who desperately wanted his daughter back, constructing a behemoth to destroy the nefarious individual who kidnapped her.
Without going too far into spoiler territory, just like Mold, this is a book that does a neat little job of whipping the tablecloth out from under your best dinner service without so much as breaking a cup just when you get comfortable in your mind that the story is about one thing, and it switches to being about something entirely different.
It's so full of atmosphere, so filled with moments of heart-string-pulling humour but absolute darkness and terror too. Her descriptions of the shambling beasts the master constructs are so brilliant I couldn't resist drawing Wrath, the ultimate beast the master settles on to carry out his vital mission...
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| "Wrath" from Lorraine Gregory's sublime "The Maker of Monsters" |
We were left wanting more by the end of the book, but again the one thing I personally hugely admire about Lorraine is her ability to build a world, fill it with amazing and interesting characters and convey something brilliant within the space of a single book, rather than spreading it out other a multi-book arc.
We've waited 2 years for Lorraine's next book and boy has it ever been worth the wait. "The Maker of Monsters" is incredible and we genuinely can't wait to see what Lorraine comes up with next.