{"id":2622,"date":"2010-08-19T03:20:19","date_gmt":"2010-08-19T07:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=2622"},"modified":"2010-08-19T03:51:55","modified_gmt":"2010-08-19T07:51:55","slug":"mr-monster-by-dan-wells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/mr-monster-by-dan-wells\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Monster by Dan Wells"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>John Wayne Cleaver wants very much not to kill you.\u00a0 He wants it so much, in fact, that he’s made up a host of rules to keep his inner monster from taking over.\u00a0 The way he complimented your shirt, for example–he said that to counteract the delicious thought of you tied to a wall, screaming in terror while he skins you alive.<\/p>\n

It’s nothing personal.\u00a0 He doesn’t hate you.\u00a0 He just has a need–or rather, his inner monster has a need–to take your life.<\/p>\n

You see, John Cleaver is a sociopath with all of the psychological tendencies of a serial killer.\u00a0 Now that he’s killed once (albeit to save his community from an ancient demon), it’s getting very difficult for him to tell who he really is.\u00a0 Is he his addiction?\u00a0 Or is that a separate persona–one that he can control, suppress, and eventually overcome?<\/p>\n

He’d better find out quick, because a new killer has arrived in town–a demon, just like the first–except this one is in touch with the Brotherhood.<\/p>\n

This was a good book.\u00a0 I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed the first, perhaps a little more so.\u00a0 The ending was awesome–excellent lead-in to the last book in the trilogy.\u00a0 Too bad we have to wait a year to read it. <shakes fist at the universe><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dan Wells<\/a> is very good at writing strong, well-developed characters, especially with his main character, John Cleaver.\u00a0 This might sound bad, but as a Mormon I can relate with John’s personal rules to keep his stray thoughts under control.\u00a0 Not that I have a secret desire to murder people, but I’d be lying if I said that it’s easy to live a celibate, porn-free lifestyle as a twenty-something young man.\u00a0 But I digress.<\/p>\n

The best part of this book was the way the romantic tension compounded the basic conflict of John vs. his need to kill.\u00a0 It’s not easy to date a girl when you have passionate dreams every other night of killing her.\u00a0 That tends to make things a little awkward (just a little).\u00a0 In spite of how sick that might sound, John and Brooke’s relationship is quite compelling, and I found myself instantly drawn to them because of it.\u00a0 Again, it makes it easy to relate–not that I, uh–yeah.\u00a0 Whatever.<\/p>\n

Overall, the book is great.\u00a0 However, I do have one criticism, which may be more personal, but I’m sure it applies to others as well.\u00a0 When John confronted the killer, things got a little too disturbing for me–not the tense, wide-eyed, “oooh, what happens next?” kind of disturbing, but the “this is just wrong–why am I reading this?” kind of disturbing.\u00a0 It didn’t make me put the book down, and the resolution was quite satisfying, but I did step back and ask that question at one point.<\/p>\n

The ending, though, is pure awesome.\u00a0 The last page–man, I’m looking forward to see what happens next!\u00a0 And if there are only three books in this series, John Cleaver has<\/em> to come to terms somehow with his inner monster–he can’t<\/em> continue in this way all his life.\u00a0 He just can’t.<\/em> He’s got <\/em>to find some kind of equilibrium.\u00a0 And him and Brooke–well, let’s just say I’m very eager to see how the series wraps up.<\/p>\n

Mr. Monster<\/em> comes out in the US at the end of September (I borrowed the UK edition from my sister).\u00a0 Like I said, it’s probably not for everyone, but if you can stomach a particularly gruesome episode of Law and Order: SVU<\/em>, you shouldn’t have a problem with this book.\u00a0 Or should you?\u00a0 Guilt!\u00a0 Guilt!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Wayne Cleaver wants very much not to kill you.\u00a0 He wants it so much, in fact, that he’s made up a host of rules to keep his inner monster from taking over.\u00a0 The way he complimented your shirt, for example–he said that to counteract the delicious thought of you tied to a wall, screaming… Continue reading Mr. Monster by Dan Wells<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[112,276,403,98,408,117],"class_list":["post-2622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-character","tag-dan-wells","tag-death","tag-horror","tag-sexual-tension","tag-violence","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-Gi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2622"}],"version-history":[{"count":55,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2677,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622\/revisions\/2677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}