★☆☆☆☆

This book is a clusterfuck of nothing and I was sorely disappointed by it.

I’ll be completely transparent with you guys, I requested the book purely based off the front cover and because I’d read and enjoyed some of the author’s works in the past. However, this was a huge mistake for me. I never read the blurb because I generally don’t do that for most of the books I read, and I won’t be making that mistake again with a Sedgwick novel.

I had no idea what this was about and so I had no idea what to expect. The story launches completely into itself with no explanation and no way for you to understand the context of the situation without having read the blurb for the book. I hate this about books. I don’t read blurbs and I know a lot of other people don’t, so when I started this I was at a loss for what was happening. This book is confusing and strange, a combination that doesn’t always play out well.

You’re better off reading something that can do this better like The Raven Cycle or Space Opera if you’re looking for a weird story.

“The night is when monsters arrive, when monsters are made.”

GENERAL THOUGHTS & CRITICISMS

I mean, wow… what can I say? This was my first 1 star of 2018. The Monsters We Deserve really takes the cake! It even beat out Zenith, which I only rated 2 stars, for my worst read of the year!

This book has received a lot of 4 and 5 star reviews but I think it really missed the mark for me. In general, a lot of things were about this one. The writing style was pretentious to the point where he was coming off not only as rude but as judgmental and arrogant. Also, at one point in the beginning of the story, and this is what really gets me, he schools the reader on how to use a comma. Thanks, you pretentious asshole, I’m a literature student, I know how to use a comma. And then throughout the whole novel, to keep this pretentious and horrible book going he proceeds to place a whole lot of unnecessary commas in his book. I just hate it so much???

There was so much borderline offensive stuff in this that is never ceased to piss me off. I basically hate-read this and would never have finished chapter 1 if this wasn’t an arc copy. Throughout the book, the author continually treats his reader/s as if they are dumb and no better than the dirt under the author’s shoes.

(There’s also another instance where he goes over what the word for-bidden means. Honestly, this did nothing to help him because the book already feels as if the main character looks down on the reader. You don’t sound smart, you sound like an asshole.

And this is a really minor note, but considering this book is only just over 100 pages, it took me a ridiculous amount of time and determination to finish it. 4 days and something like 40 notes left on my kindle as a result of this book. What a wild ride of hatred and rage.

“I would like to mention that you sent me here, It was your idea.”

WHAT DID I JUST READ?

My main takeaway from this book is that the author didn’t know what he wanted it to be. There is so much genre-splicing that it’s silly. This book feels like the author was trying a whole bunch of different things all in one go and it didn’t pay off. If anything, it felt unedited.

In the beginning, I could picture this as one of those shitty fake-deep oscar nominated movies that you get around the Summer time. Then it turned into a mystery and then a ghost story then a weird coming of middle-age story and then it was straight up an analysis of Frankenstein ft. Mary Shelley was racist and also classist (duh) and also here’s an a-z of why you should not read this book. I saw another reviewer say that reading this was like reading a thesis on Frankenstein and I have to say, I completely agree with them. [LINK]

REPETITIVE AND GRATING

I titled this section the way I feel because at this point it’s 6:15 at night and I’m tired and I just want to go to sleep. This book was just over 100 pages and yet it managed to piss me off completely and really turn me off the author’s future novels. It grated on my nerves and irritated me the entire time I was reading it. It was also so repetitive I couldn’t believe what I was reading. At first, I thought it was just a typo because I was reading an advanced copy but… the repetition stayed throughout the whole novel and it was confusing and weird. It honestly felt like Sedgwick was just trying to get the word count up and thinking his pretentious writing/character would cover him for this one.

Here are some examples if you think I’m being dramatic:

“…beaten and drawn, beaten and drawn”
“Put the shopping away, I put the shopping away and the…”
“I stared at it for the longest time, the longest time…”

The main character is dramatic and obsessed with Mary Shelley and her book, Frankenstein. I’m not entirely sure what the author was trying to accomplish with this book. Maybe he just got fed up one day and wrote a book trying to prove that the author is sperate from their works??? I don’t know, but this book turned out to pretty much just be an ode to why the dude hates Frankenstein.

SO, DO I RECOMMEND IT?

Honestly, no. I thought it was pretty terrible. But maybe if you enjoy Frankenstein or have to do an analysis on the book, this might be the novel for you.

Take my review with a grain of salt though, because as of me writing this, I am the only reviewer to have rated this one star (out of 54 reviews). That being said, it’s still a pretty new release and not many people have actually read it yet.

I haven't read any Marcus Sedgwick before but I loved the writing style of this book. It was both lyrical and filled with beautiful metaphors. The descriptions and imagery were wonderful yet horrifying at the same time, which made this such an amazing read!

A four star read!!

I’ve been a fan of Marcus Sedgewick for years – he has a wonderful voice and economy of language. That said this wasn’t really for me. It was an interesting piece of writing and I like new takes on old classics – this was heavily influenced by Frankenstein – but ultimately I found it a bit thin on story. If you like slightly more experimental and short punchy pieces this could well be for you though.

'The Monsters We Deserve' is a book that pays homage to Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece 'Frankenstein' which is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year. It's certainly a well judged move by the author/publisher to release this just as we've moved into Autumn in the UK and heading towards Halloween. Sedgwick's writing is beautiful and conjures up a glorious atmosphere that lasts the duration of the novel. His lyrical, brutal prose is alluring, and I couldn't stop thinking about the story whenever I had to place it down to attend to something important.

I know you shouldn't commit the cardinal sin of judging a book by its cover, but that is what initially drew me to this book. The use of monochrome really works and attracts the eye. The cover is a little creepy, and I had wondered whether this theme would continue throughout the novel. I was pleasantly surprised that the creep factor was turned up to the maximum at a few select points. At times the often seductive, poetic language strays into the land of the pretentious which, although is sad, didn't affect my overall appreciation. This is well worth investing your time in, especially if you're a fan of Mary Shelley's work or of the horror/young adult genres.

Many thanks to Zephyr for an ARC. I was not required to post a review, and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

A fabulously spooky book filled with jump-scares and things that go bump in the night. Really enjoyed this creepy book. At first, it made my head spin a bit, was he writing about himself or another author, but once I got my head around it, I couldn't put it down!

A modern Gothic tale that owes as much to A Christmas Carol as it does to Frankenstein.
I personally found it pretentious (to be perfectly honest, "wanky" was the word I used) and the ending is infuriatingly abrupt after so much writer-ly angst, but it's filled with powerful imagery and there are some wonderful moments that are genuinely creepy.

I love Marcus Sedgwick's lyrical, atmospheric writing. This is a perfect book for the anniversary of Frankenstein, and I've always wanted a book about that particular Geneva holiday.

The cover for this book really drew me in, then the blurb it sounded all gothic and full of horror. Then i got to reading the book, yes it is filled with gothic images and characters who manage to get under your skin. But overall i was left not connecting with the book. There was something that just did not let me connect fully with the story and i cannot put my finger on it. A well told and imaginative story with a good writing style, first book i have read from this author and i may look into their other books at some point

http://books-and-thebigscreen.co.uk/books/the-monsters-we-…-marcus-sedgwick/

Written in the vein of Mary Shelley’s own Frankenstein, Marcus Sedgwick’s The Monsters We Deserve considers in beautiful, brutal prose the peculiarly intimate relationship between author and creation, reality and fiction, and the strange nature of horror itself.

A writer leaves for the Alpine peaks, determined to finally end their stint in the literary genre that once granted them success and eventually came to define them. But slowly, surely, they find themselves trapped in the house that was to be their respite, cornered by mysterious happenings and held captive by the book they so detest: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In seeking a greater meaning for that gothic masterpiece, our enigmatic narrator soon finds themselves lured into that very same world, replete with monsters who refuse to stay on the page…

From his beguiling descriptions of nature to his skilful characterisation, The Monsters We Deserve keenly demonstrates Sedgwick’s seductive style, his well-honed sense of how words may fall together on the page to be almost poetic in their inclusion. There is a similar attention paid to the details of how the horror of this novella unfolds, as Sedgwick offers us the conventions of the genre whilst also contemplating the greater fears reflected by Shelley in her own tale of monstrosity and cruelty.

But it is in the adroit interplay realised between the characters, narrator and the reader themselves where Sedgwick most shines. The novella as a whole is able to serve as first literary criticism, then standard horror, and finally ends on a philosophical note tinged with the terror of the unknown. Such a fear lurks in the background of the story, occasionally creeping back into view as our anonymous narrator, ever unreliable, is drawn time and again to the book they so despise.

And hatred it undoubtedly is, though perhaps a sentiment poisoned by their own dark secret. Given only the initials MS, and their status as an author, we are led to wonder as to what part of himself Sedgwick has injected into his narrator, as indeed we question the allure of Shelley’s novel to a writer who scorns it so. It would seem an audacious move by Sedgwick to create a narrator so fixed in their enmity, above all in a novella designed to celebrate the bicentenary anniversary of Shelley’s own work, but through questioning the latter’s characters Sedgwick cannot help but invite us to reflect on his own.

At times the description is pretentious, the language becoming distinctly ostentatious; it is perhaps a stylistic choice used to echo the contemptuous tone of our narrator, although at other points this lexical approach serves only to hinder the reader’s enjoyment of Sedgwick’s piece. Periodically employing long lists of nouns, and relying on ellipses to communicate a breakdown in dialogue, is a style that sometimes frustrates in its occasional presence.

However, these flaws can only be minor deterrents: The Monsters We Deserve seldom disappoints when it comes to Sedgwick’s talent for storytelling, the pace building to finally conclude in a dénouement open with doubt. Assigned the role of editor by our narrator, and implicated in the novella’s ominous theme, it would seem the reader themselves becomes distinctly unknowable alongside the story’s enigmatic characters. Thus the question at the heart of the piece lingers in our minds too, forced as we are to consider our own responsibility for the creation of monsters.

In Shelley’s original novel, it is Victor Frankenstein who attempts to remake Adam; but it is perhaps The Monsters We Deserve that asks who the real fallen angel of the story might be.

(Thank you so much to Head of Zeus for offering me the chance to review this book; I received a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review).

This short book based around Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is unusual and despite its brevity it wasn't a quick read because of the need to read carefully to fully appreciate the underlying themes - do writers truly create their characters or do they only become real in the minds and imaginations of readers? It was hard to tell at times whether the events in the book are actually happening or if the writer is experiencing gas induced hallucinations, and the use of first person means the book reads as a stream of thought which makes the flow a little disjointed at times. Lots of literary criticism of Frankenstein which was interesting and the suspense builds well throughout the story.

I'm a bit confused because I've mixed feelings and I don't know if I liked it or not.
I was expecting something on the horror side and got a literary short novel.
It's well written, irritanting and fascinating at the same time, it's slow and sometimes boring but you cannot give up.
I recommend it to people who like literary metaworks and are interested in literary criticism.
Many thanks to Head of Zeus and Netgalley for this ARC

I received a free ebook version of this one from Netgalley. Thankyou to both Head of Zeus and Netgalley for allowing me to read this! My review is still honest.

I don’t know how to review this. The Monsters We Deserve is alike Sedgwick’s other works in that there is a deep, philosophical, subtle message beneath the beautiful writing-but I’m not sure I fully got it.
The Monsters We Deserve follows an unnamed author who is spending time high in the mountains attempting to write a novel. While there, he ponders the meaning of writing and creation through the medium of discussing the book Frankenstein. It quickly becomes a creepy, mysterious, fantastical little story in which all is never as it seems.
Sedgwick’s style and sense of setting is mesmerising and the story itself was interesting. I enjoyed the aspects of Frankenstein and the individuals who crop up in this. I liked the discussion of the writing process and how authors think of their own works. It is a whimsical, eerie little tale with so many deeper meanings that I’m sure will appeal to a specific type of reader. It was disturbing at times as our singular character seemed to spiral into madness and I was never sure if what he was seeing was a product of his own mind. It was unnerving to know so little about them-no gender, family status, anything about their life outside of the mountain was revealed and it really created a spooky vibe.
I did like the talk of being responsible for your creations, and yet being unable to be. Once your story is out in the world, people make it their own, they change it and adapt it so that it no longer becomes what you desired it to be. And yet, you still have to take ownership of your now warped creation. There really are some beautiful ideas and concepts that make you think.
The thing is, I always enjoy Sedgwick’s books in the way that I enjoy the beauty of them, I appreciate the plot and what he’s achieved, but I never quite find out what the ingredients are. I’m sure this has very intricate symbolism because I recognise the themes-but I just didn’t get what they were meant to symbolise. I spent a lot of this book feeling like I wasn’t in on the conversation. That’s not to say it wasn’t good as I do appreciate a lot about Sedgwick’s writing-but a lot of this one went over my head.

Goodreads:

Everyone takes inspiration from somewhere. Tucked away in the forest, surrounded by the white noise of oblivion an author awaits. Creation fills the silence, not as intended. But the monsters we create are the monsters we deserve.

Facebook:

In the beating heart of the forest an author waits for inspiration, something new, fresh. What awaits is something created, something of the past, something they deserve. This book is beautifully written, I almost read straight through but had to look up once in awhile to remind myself I was not in an aspen forest surrounded in silence. Its publication is set for this week, you can even order it through the link below.

This book was not what I expected and that in the best way possible.
The Monsters We Deserve is a very meta story, it deals with the struggles of writing and having your written words out in the world while also telling the story of an author out in the mountains trying to fins inspiration for a new book.

The writing has a very stream of consciousness feel. I could relate to it very well, maybe because I'm a writer myself, but also, because it was just very easy to dive into the story-telling and feel with the protagonist. At times this type of writing got a bit too much or boring and I had to skim-read some passages, but overall I liked it a lot and actually marked many different quotes.

The book has something autobiographical while also feeling very mystical and scary at times. The protagonist hides in an old house, where he studies Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and writes his own work. He then is visited by Mary Shelley's ghost and she asks him for help. This part felt a bit weird to me and I know many people felt that way. Just that Shelley, who is such an important female figure in the writing world would need the help of a man to make her biggest success actually good is a bit wrong in my eyes.

It's also weird how this book at times feels like it's a analytical piece about Frankenstein. It goes through all the supposed short comings of the novel and the protagonist never stops saying how much he hates it and how much it lacks. This a bit unfortunate for a book that seems like it's targeted towards people who actually enjoyed the book and don't need a man to explain what the real meaning of it was.

Overall I read this book in one sitting and really enjoyed the different way it was written and was pulled into the story effortlessly. It was the criticism of Frankenstein and Shelley herself and her supposed lack of ability that didn't sit well with me and stopped me from giving this very special read a full five star rating.

I received an ARC from Head of Zeus/Zephyr via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Head of Zeus is an imprint I have come to associate with innovative projects and this work, combining a subtle horror story with literary criticism, seems a fitting tribute for the bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’.

I have read a few of Marcus Sedgwick’s novels and been very impressed by his strong sense of place and ability to capture the essence of the Gothic tradition. I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting when I requested it and at first was quite puzzled by the format and his repeated statements of hatred towards her novel.

Yet it lured me in as Sedgwick established his evocative mountainside setting and his stream of consciousness narration that made me feel as though I was present alongside him in the chalet and witness to his growing confusion and unusual visitations.

The book is infused with a slow, creeping sense of horror; not the kind where terrifying things happen in front of your eyes but that sense of growing unease and dread where you are not quite sure if it is all in your imagination.

Certainly an unusual work that defies classification. I felt that Sedgwick made his points about ‘Frankenstein’ in a creative way that is bound to stimulate discussion. The cover image was stunning combining stag, man and tree.

This was a fever dream of a book!

This will be quite a short review as I'm.not sure what to say about it - I don't know if I liked it or no.
The author creates a world (his own?) in which he is shuttered in a cabin, wrestling with writers block. The text is letters to an editor, and also musings of his own. But the solitude and perhaps the authors own slow creeping madness turn the words into a heady mix of images that I'm never quite sure what is real and what is not.
Is he suffering from isolation madness? Is the gas leaking out of his cooking canister and making him hallucinate? Is he just mad? Or has the ghost of Mary Shelley really come to entreat him to reimagine her most famous work?

I'm still unsure. And I kinda hate that about books! I like definite answers and endings, so it was annoying to read such ambiguities. However, the lurid, often hallucinatory prose was gripping.

Jury is out in this one. I'd say go for it. Its certainly interesting, as a literary exercise.

I found this novella, while having an interesting premise, failed to live up to my expectations.

I expected some form of intrigue and self discovery. Instead I felt underwhelmed with the narrator seeming to reflect upon themselves in a fashion which was unappealing and bland.

A very short tale, this should have taken me less than an hour to complete. Instead it took me 3 sessions over 4 days to complete it.

While not a complete failure, I doubt I would have picked this up had I known just how flat and colourless the story was.

I've read a few books by Marcus Sedgwick and they're almost all exceptionally odd, so this one didn't take me too much by surprise -- I was expecting beautiful prose and a narrative that tied my brain in knots and that's more or less what I got.

The prose is, indeed, beautiful, in a self-inserty kind of way that probably appeals particularly to writers. The narrator is a writer (implied to be Sedgwick himself due to use of initials) who has retreated to a house in the Alps to write a book which seems to be a condemnation of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, which he claims to hate. His struggles to write are lovingly described in the terms of someone who has clearly felt that same creative block in the past -- it's both relatable and lovely, at least in terms of prose.

The story, however, is decidedly unlovely (in a good way) (I think). It becomes increasingly threatening as this writer begins to hear breathing, finds objects moved around the house, lose track of time... at first subtly, and then growing more obvious until he finds himself physically prevented from trying to leave.

Then he's visited by the ghost of Mary Shelley, and things get stranger from there.

The book leaves a lot up to your imagination. Is it really a ghost story? Is the writer suffering from a mental breakdown, or being poisoned by leaky gas? (Mentioned near the beginning is a dodgy gas pipe, and a smell 'like gas' is repeatedly referenced throughout the story, which might explain the hallucinations and loss of time.) It's unsettling, and Sedgwick does a remarkable job of conveying incoherent thoughts without the prose becoming clunky or unreadable.

My main complaint would be that the book is a little bit too self-referential. Or... perhaps that's not the right term. But I mentioned already that the writer is implied to be Sedgwick himself, and maybe that's while it feels a little cheesy. It's hard to explain the exact moments that bothered me without giving spoilers, to be honest, but I'd been enjoying it thoroughly up until that conversation and then it began to lose me.

I'm trying to think of comparative titles and I guess I might reference the ending of I AM THE MESSENGER by Markus Zusak (is it a Marcus thing?), but this was definitely less frustrating than that, because there was less buildup and it felt less like a plot-related copout. I suppose I'm just particularly sensitive to things that feel like a self insert fic where the writer is exploring a weird daydream-turned-nightmare.

The prose and style is definitely a strength, though, and the ultimate message -- that you can't control your own creations, but that you're responsible for how they're interpreted and what they're used to achieve -- is a powerful one.
--
This review appears on Goodreads and will be cross-posted to my blog.

My thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for a review copy of this one.

This is a very strange little book. I put in a request for it because essentially of the themes that the description said it dealt with, of Mary Shelley, and Frankenstein; of the thought processes that go into imagination, into creation, into reading and writing. And it certainly is about that, but just not in a way I’d expected or imagined. Our author or at least an author (still not sure whether this is meant to be the author himself or a creation through which he is speaking) is up in the mountains, close to the location of the Villa Diodati, where Mary Shelley at age nineteen first came up with her most famous novel Frankenstein, pondering over the book, which he claims he hates for various reasons, its elitism and “racism” among them. But alongside he also engages with various other questions that trouble him, the isolated environment in which he is which is beginning to get to him, the writer’s block that he seems to be suffering, his own work, which has been writing horror stories, which come back to haunt him. We see and experience what the author does, in a sense like a stream of consciousness style. Occasionally we hear another voice, the voice of another person I mean (you will see who I mean when you read the book) but that too is as the author has seen and heard it.

This was a very different book from anything I’ve read before, and honestly even after finishing, this is a book hard to classify (it isn’t a story yet it is, it isn’t a literary essay, yet it is, and more such confusions) or even rate for me, in fact I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, even though I am trying to put down my thoughts. Both the Frankenstein and Mary Shelley theme, and that of authors and their creations (especially in the “horror” category) are explored alongside, the latter in some ways springing from the former and yet separate. The author claims to dislike the book, to hate it, offers some literary criticism, but then also takes us through what is admirable about it. The story (which I’m sure everyone knows) of how and where Frankenstein was created is mentioned, but while the blurb led me to expect that there would be a lot more focus on that aspect, this wasn’t really so. His criticisms of the book were points that hadn’t really occurred to me—so they were interesting to explore, and its message as our author identifies it was something that did stand out on my reading too so that I agreed with. Again the exploration of author and creation, how much of a creation is the author’s and how much it takes on a life of its own, and even touches the author, I found interesting to think about. The author/narrator’s own work coming back to haunt him in different ways was perhaps the fictional part of the story, but whether the atmosphere of the place, the isolation is a mere trigger to all of the rest that’s happening or represents something more is one point that I haven’t been able to figure out. The link between the Mary Shelley–Frankenstein issue, and the author–creation question made sense, as also did the question of why our author’s creations were perhaps haunting him (that there was more reason than one), but the ending was something I couldn’t entirely make sense of. I see some points that the book is trying to make (I think) but not I think entirely what it tries to say at the end—the ‘conclusion’ as it were.

The artwork between the sections was interesting—some of this made sense, the other parts didn’t (was it meant not to? Was it meant to represent the confusion?)—in the ARC version, part of it wasn’t very clear either.

But anyway, how do I rate it? I guess mid-way-3 stars. I can’t say I loved the book, not did I completely dislike it. It made me think of some things, some things made sense, and yet not all of it.

This is an interesting book in that it not only re imagines one of the greatest literary works of all time but also acts as a criticism to said book.
Its an interesting concept and works for a short story.
Solid 3.5*s from me.