The narration by Ben Onwukwe is well suited to the atmosphere of the audiobook. An intriguing read that will leave the reader both mystified and desiring more. A worthwhile foray into something that lingers between the historical fantasy and something indescribably more.

TL/DR: A beautifully written mashup of well-beloved fantasy tales - great potential, but never managed to move far enough away from its inspirations to become its own story.

I honestly don’t know where to start, because I still have not quite settled on where I am. At the end of the day, Ordinary Monsters is my latest conundrum that tears me in every direction of love, annoyance, awe, and confusion.

Technically set in Victorian London and Edinburgh, Ordinary Monsters also wends through Gilded Age America in not-so-gilded Mississippi, the underworld of Tokyo during their transition to a growing power, and another entire world of its own dimension. Through these various settings a pair of detectives, a cagey man who knows more than he says and a woman who was once a Pinkerton and knows surprisingly little about what her job actually entails, track down “special” children in order to bring that back to their special school in Edinburgh. To accomplish this, they bob and weave around a baddie who is following, an exile of the school who you really want to wonder throughout whether he’s actually the bad guy (it feels sometimes like unreliable narrators have kind of ruined the world). At the super secret school for these children, “the Talents”, a supposedly benevolent doctor purports to create a safe place for them to thrive. What follow is for you to find out, but it’s likely right along the lines of what you imagine.

The hands down highlights of this book are the incredible world building and, because this was audio, the exceptional performance of Ben Onwukwe.

Victorian Gothic always has potential to be dark and beautiful, but also can easily turn to gore and camp instead of intelligent creepiness. Miro nails the beauty in darkness here, creating an atmosphere you can feel while listening to Onwukwe’s voice that is perfectly timbered for this genre and time period. The settings are real, but how they are written makes the fantastical pieces believable and the characters ones you want to wrap your arm around and protect. Throughout all of it, Onwukwe hits every character hard, with an accent that would have you running straight down the dark alley he just told you had the really big baddie standing at the end. Despite a slowish start, I really wanted to love this.

What Ordinary Monsters did to lose me was to constantly remind me, to the point of distraction, of a plethora of other fantasy stories I’ve loved over the years. As Mark Twain said, “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope.”. There is much truth to this quote and I will never decry anyone for their inspiration, but in this particular case the kaleidoscope does not distort enough to stand on its own. While the story itself is woven creatively, I was halfway through this book and described it to a colleague as “Victorian X-Men who landed in The Golden Compass, while traipsing around collecting more of Miss Peregrine’s peculiar children”.

At the end of the day, it’s a beautifully written story where the effort was placed on the writing rather than creating something new.

4.5/5

*Note: I started this as an audiobook and unfortunately had to DNF. I could not follow the narrator at all and after 4+ hours of listening I realized I had no idea what was going on or who any one was. Luckily I'd just received a physical arc, so I decided to switch to that and I am so glad I did.

This book is.. fantastic. I couldn't stop reading it. It was especially frustrating because I had very little time to read, so I found myself hoarding pages like Gollum whenever I could find 5 or 10 mins to spare. This books lingers.. you think about it. The world, the characters, wtf is going to happen next. It is complicated, there's a lot of POV, scene, timeline changes, but I found it work well because there were clear defining line breaks for each one.

I really cannot wait to dive until book 2.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillian for the e-ARC. All thoughts an opinions are my own.

The premise is intriguing however the story is slow to start and is not fast moving. Dark and different and not what I had expected. Left me feeling creeped out and unsettled - if that’s your thing then this book is for you. Narrator is good except when doing female voices.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

This book is dark and spooky. The plot is very interesting and intriguing. The way in which all of the different characters intersect and interact in the story is wonderful and confusing at times. Marlow and Brint are my favorite characters and loved every one of their scenes. I am highly anticipating book 2 in this new and exciting series!

Dickens meets Marvel’s X-Men is the best way I can describe "Ordinary Monsters" by J.M. Miro. Orphans with extraordinary abilities from all over the world are taken to the mysterious Cairndale Institute in Scotland. Is it for their own protection and instruction, or does the owner have more nefarious plans to carry out? This book follows the adventures of one set of these orphans, each with an amazing power, as they discover whom they should trust and from whom they should run.

Many reviewers have complained about the length of the audiobook, but I enjoyed the extended time I got to spend in this amazingly well-crafted world. Miro has shown a great ability in world building, and though it takes some time to follow all the threads, the reveals are worth it in the end. The themes of trust and family run throughout. Though many of these children are alone in the world, they have each other.

I have to say I did enjoy the narrator, Ben Onwukwe. His accent lent the correct character and gravitas to the story. I hope he reprises his role when the next installment is released, as I do not think it would be as good without the same narrator.

This work would definitely suit fans of "Miss Peregrine’s" and "Harry Potter," though for slightly more mature readers. The book is clearly a first installment, and I look forward to the next work from J.M. Miro.

I received this for review from NetGalley.

Ordinary Monsters is mysterious and captivating with quite a suspenseful build-up of an ending that leaves you wanting more. We meet the complex dark persona of Jacob Marber, the innocent "blue" boy foundling Marlowe, fellow Talents Charlie, Komako & Ribs, and Alice Quicke, the stand-offish detective charged with escorting them to the Institute. Epic standoffs abound. So looking forward to the series' next installment!

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Netgalley for providing me with this ALC.

Ok wow. This book is intricate, detailed, and intriguing. I was first worried about the size but it’s entirely worth it. At no point did I feel it dragged. Excellent world building and amazing prose. It’s a gothic victorian tale where two children with mysterious “powers” are being hunted. There’s many characters and moving parts, but the way it all comes together is divine. I cannot wait for the second book. If this series isn’t turned into a movie I’ll be shocked.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

DNF at 1/3. The audiobook is 25+ hours. Interesting set of characters but wasn’t holding my attention.

Narration was well done.

This is an imaginative piece of historical Gothic fantasy.  The worldbuilding, characters and prose came together to offer a unique and nauced story. 

I had hoped this one would be a bit darker so I have to acknowledge that it was not entirely to my tastes. I still enjoyed it, but I'll admit that it was more wholesome and cozy than the dark fiction that normally draws me in. 

I would recommend this ones to fans of historical fantasy who enjoy getting lost in a sweeping tale. 

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

Let me be up front - I did not finish this book. It just wasn't for me. So why the four stars? The book didn't resonate with me, but that doesn't mean it's not an artfully crafted romp through the Victorian world.

Ordinary Monsters, by J. M. Miroslav starts out with visceral storytelling setting the scene of a hard, cruel world. I found the tone a bit darker than my tastes - and it's not that the story is gritty to shock. No, the tone was carefully crafted and chose to highlight the world these characters come from, and make it feel real and solid.

While one of the most anticipated books of 2022 wasn't for me, it doesn't mean it's not for you.

I was grateful to receive a free ARC from Macmillion Audio and NetGallery for my honest review of Ordinary Monsters.

Rating: 3.88 out of 5
-Characters: 4/5
-Cover: 3/5
-Story: 3.5/5
-Writing: 5/5
Genre: Fantasy/Historical Fiction
Type: Audiobook
Worth?: Yeah
TW: Rape

Want to thank Netgalley and publishers for giving me the chance to listen to this book. I am late on my review and I am so sad about. Either way here we are. The book was long and seemed to drag a bit here and there but I really enjoyed the strong females in this book and the boys? I loved the aspects of them as well. I would actually love to see this as a movie.

With that said I did find that it dragged a lot and that I needed to stop here and there to get a breather. Also the chapters in this audio isn't given an indication of what chapter I am on. Really hate that in audiobooks. Besides that I really think people who love fantasy should give this big ole book a try!

In this dark fantasy audio book, the narrator does a great job bringing to life the cast of characters both young and old. In the story, a society in charge of finding, boarding, and sometimes rescuing young children with strange and unimaginable abilities employs a range of both above-board and nefarious methods to find, coerce, and sometimes rescue children with strange and unimaginable abilities. Fantastical adventures abound, though the writing is a little repetitive .

Ordinary Monsters is already getting stellar reviews, and I'm sure it will only collect more of them. This is one of those lengthy, detailed fantasy stories many people love that tend to lose me along the way.
The setup is intriguing, and the immediate variety of dark, gothic settings are vivid and atmospheric. I often have trouble picturing scenes in my head, and I can't tell if Ordinary Monsters makes imagining easy because the writing is just that rich and evocative, or if I've seen these scenes in movies often enough to know exactly what the author is aiming for.
The pacing is hurt by flashbacks filling detail into background already mostly pieced together. Besides confusing me about what is present time versus a flashback, these efforts are meant to build history and empathy for characters. Introducing human connections and plenty of tragic backstories should have worked fantastically, but none of it clicked for me. I just didn't care about any of the characters! Honestly it made me think of the anime [redacted] that did a basic setup, then settled into picking characters, providing brief backstory, and immediately killing them off at a rate of at least one per episode. I wasn't given time to know them before they were gone, so none of the deaths had much impact.
What this book does well is sharing story time between a large number of characters throughout a plot where a lot of things happen. There is a good dose of questioning morality and motivations without drawing any firm conclusions, and the ending neatly sets up book two. Ben Onwukwe is brilliant and deserves all the praise for his variety of accents and steady narration guiding readers through this chunky book.

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this audio book.

This was one hell of a ride! Very long & complex, but worth it. I did struggle at times to follow along to what was happening/who everyone was while listening even though the narrator was great. I would probably have been better off reading a physical copy.

2022 was supposed to be the year of the short book due to chronic reading slumpage.

This book scared me with its length but the summary grabbed me. I’ve had such awesome luck with choosing books!

Several times I found myself wondering, ehh did I miss something? It’s all over the place!! 1882 Victorian London gives this story an awesome Dickinsonian vibe to begin with but it visits Chicago, Scotland, Tokyo …

Charlie & Marlowe are two orphans with unusual powers. They are The Talents. A jaded cop finds herself responsible for delivering these kids to … ahh another vibe … reminded me of the adult version of mrs peregrines home for peculiar children.

So who’s the bad guy? Is it a creature made of smoke that’s hunting them? Who’s going to save the world today?

I can’t wait for the next book in this immersive world & this one is now on my Amazon Book Wishlist because I need it in my home library! Perfect choice for narrator.

Great book!

This is one of those books that lingers with you. I’ve seen it compared to pretty much all stories about children with supernatural gifts; The Umbrella Academy, X-Men, Miss Peregrines, etc and then crossed with the atmosphere and time of Penny Dreadful. That was enough to make me pick it up and it did not disappoint.

There’s a seemingly huge cast of characters but it primarily focuses on two orphaned children with unique talents and the people trying to bring them back to a school while also being hunted by others. It took a bit to grasp all of the cast but once I did, I was buckled in for the long haul. While this book seems dark and gritty, it also feels whimsical at times and as innocent as the children we follow. The story is long and involved but it never felt like a slog to me. The writing is rich and I can picture every single scene vividly. I will basically not shut up about this book for the foreseeable future. Apologies in advance.

J.M. Miro has written a dark, gothic and Victorian book. The world building and characters are very complex. The story is told in multiple POVs and is a very long book. I was hooked at the beginning but eventually the book dragged a lot and I struggled quite a bit to follow along. Towards the end, the book finally picked up its pace.
The book feels familiar to other books, but not quite. I really enjoyed the train scene. The descriptions were so vivid that it was easy to picture. The book has many wonderful scenes but unfortunately it fell flat for me in the middle.
The narrator, Ben Onwukwe was brilliant. He wrapped each character with unique voices and brought them to life.
I would recommend this book to those who enjoy 19+ hrs of listening time. The narrator definitely did a good job. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have finished this book.

Special thanks to Macmillan Audio and Netgalley for the ALC.

Fantastic! One of the best fantasy novels I have ever read.

J.M. Miro has created an epic historical fantasy that is sure to become beloved by all who read it. Ordinary Monsters has all the aspects of what I love in a fantasy novel- complex characters, excellent world-building, a propulsive story with lots of side stories, and a thrilling wild ride that left me guessing until the very end.

Knowing now that this is only the first in a series makes me even more excited and I can't wait for the release of the next book.

Do yourself a favor and if you only read one book this year, make it this book!

Listening to the 'Ordinary Monsters' audiobook was my first audiobook experience and it will factor into my review of this book. Like many other reviewers, I thought this story was very similar to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs and also the tv series 'The Nevers.' Children with supernatural powers being whisked away to a mysterious institute was the main plot and it's easy to compare it to other books.

I did not realize this book was 700 pages, so the audiobook was very long...too long for my liking. I thought the story was slow paced, but suspenseful enough that I did not give up. The narrator had a theatrical voice which helped to bring the story to life. His English accent was a good match for the Victorian period of this story. My only critique is that his female voices were inconsistent, changing slightly from chapter to chapter. I also felt that some character's voices did not match their personalities such as Alice and Brint. Having so many characters is problematic for audiobooks. I did not have the convenience of flipping back a few pages if I forgot who a character was. This did effect my opinion of the book because I did lose track of who some characters were.

The story itself was very atmospheric and I felt like I was there with the characters. The moody and seedy Victorian setting and the supernatural elements were a good homage to the penny dreadful genre. Each character had an interesting backstory and it had an episodic narrative structure which would make this a great tv series in the future. The author created a very intriguing world but I think it would have been more interesting if children were not the focus.

Due to the length of the audiobook and the slow pace story, I rate this book 3/5 stars. I think I would have liked it more if I had read it instead.