Mr. Monster

I don't know what it says about me that a book about a teenage psychopath and serial killer demons gives me so much joy, but I also don't care!

Even though the first book in this series only received 3.5 stars from me, I enjoyed it very much. The main reason for that rating came down to (as Dan Wells often speaks about on his podcast Writing Excuses, where I first heard about these books) the lack of foreshadowing (or as Dan puts it, the initial promise made to the reader). Because of this, I was caught off guard by the antagonist and the conflict. I like a good genre bend, but it wasn't as seamless as it maybe could have been, which brought down an otherwise extremely entertaining read.

Everything that was less than perfect in the first show more novel was absent in the second. And everything that made the first good were even better in this installment.

The audiobook narrator for this is insanely talented at sounding like a hormonal, emotional, psychopathic teenage boy who is in the middle of a lot of shit. The fights John has with his mom make me feel like the kid at the slumber party who tries to tip toe into the kitchen for a glass of water while people are screaming in the living room.

The demon in this book is way better than the first and John's stake in the conflict, toeing the line between soon-to-be serial killer and mentally ill kid trying his best, and the ever shifting state of his reputation in his hometown all became that much more pressing in the second novel.

As completely awful as a lot of John’s thoughts are, his determination to be better, hard fought self-reliance, and disciplined approach to being a good person in the face of his own psychopathy made me feel so unbelievably strongly for him. The fact that John struggles so hard against his own mind and his own nature to be a good person is the type of crazy twist on the accidental hero architype that hits you like a stray golf ball when you realize just how well done it is. Bravo Dan Wells for making me feel such sympathy for a character who has to remind himself not to kill animals or his loved ones!

If you want a novel with a lot of internal conflict, this is the book for you. You do have to be okay with being inside the head of a character who embodies two of the most emotionally volatile types of people—teenagers and psychopaths. So, yeah, proceed with caution. This boy can definitely do dark. show less

One of my least favorite genres is slasher horror. I don't particularly like blood, graphic violence and terrible things people do to one another laid out in front of me. So why in the world would I spend my Spring Break reading one? Because the writer is too good at his craft, darn it. I couldn't force myself to not pick it up nor put it down.

The second book in the John Wayne Cleaver series picks up right after the first, I Am Not A Serial Killer, leaves off. John is a teenage sociopath, convinced he has all the makings of becoming a serial killer, but managing to keep all the tendencies bottled up behind walls. He actively works to keep what he calls Mr. Monster, the killer inside, hidden, appeased and locked away from a situation show more where he might get out and lead John to actually injure someone. But Mr. Monster has his uses, as he helps John face down and overcome a real serial killer at the end of the first book. The problem is, Mr. Monster is not satisfied and now wants to kill again. Can John get the beast within back under control?

Adding to the pressure is a nosy FBI agent who is still in the small town of Clayton, trying to solve the last serial killer case. The agent keeps asking a lot of questions of John, who is desperate to keep all his secrets, but driven by a curiosity to know more about a new series of murders in town. The agent keeps feeding him tidbits to keep him coming back, while laying traps to find out the truth of what happened. Can John keep the agent from learning all the secrets without having him believe he is somehow involved with the killings? And how to handle the cutest girl in school who suddenly likes him and considers him a hero and knight protector. There are a lot of twists and turns for this teen who is trying to protect his small town from evil without becoming evil himself.

The story, while pulling no punches in the horror department, is so engaging, it is all I could do to not read it in one sitting. Dan Wells is a fantastic writer and does an excellent job of pulling the reader in and spinning a good story. I enjoy his characterizations and how he dives inside the human mind. While more light hearted than the Alex Cross novels by James Patterson (Yes, I have read a couple. Couldn't sleep for a week, thank you.), the series is targeted at teens. Just gross enough to get the attention, but interesting in how he presents John as a character with which to identify. It is easy to see real teens thinking like him. I keep expecting John to snap out of his belief he is serial killer potential. I have high hopes for the next book. Yes, it is downloading to my Kindle right now. I just can't stop myself. show less

While I greatly enjoyed I Am Not A Serial Killer, Wells' John Cleaver followup simply didn't reach the heights of the original. It took far too long to reach the meat of the plot, John's mental processes were muddled and less engaging, and the addition of the Mr. Monster made this feel far too Dexter derivative (and I hated Lidnsey's Dexter, but I loved the streamlined Showtime Dexter that scraped a lot of the crapoff the source material for the honest gems inside the base premise.)

That's the short bit: the longer bits come now.

We spend over 150 pages just meandering through John's life. He's got an FBI agent on his back, he'strying to figure out what to do with the object of his fixation, and thinking back to his big score a few months show more ago. Small town Clayton life is not all that interesting, and it makes for slow reading.

John doesn't understand human behavior, but has learned how to vaguely immitate it. I say vaguely, because where most sociopaths are skilled manipulators, John falls flat here. He lacks charisma, makes morbid jokes, and is generally known to be abnormal since he's working at the morgue with his mom. This also hurts our ability to engage with him, because his emotional state is flat and foreign. I know that's the crux of the book -- that's part of what makes him useful to his eventual captor. But it's inconsistent, and states his "John can't feel [blank]" as opposed to having more concrete sensory details. When his blood's up, why aren't we getting more of the rush? When he just can't bring himself to care about the torture victims, we should get some sort of cue that isn't just John telling us in the least emotionally engaging language.

This proves inconsistent through the work, though. Suddenly John longs for heroism and a break from his sociopathic nature. Is he honestly a sociopath then? If he realizes there is a right and a wrong, if he wants to do the RIGHT thing as opposed to the surival thing, the needs thing, is he honestly that disconnected? It betrays the whole conciet of the series, and leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

So which is it? Generic Teen Male hero with madness as a superpower (my least favorite trope in fiction) or a genuine teen predator who has simply found his fixation, and that other victims simply won't interest/cut it for him? That answer was never delivered. I don't know that it will be in the next book, either. (Which I own and will still read!)

Anyway -- it wasn't a bad book, but it left way too much in question, was far too slow, and wasn't internally consistent. On the other hand, it separated John and Brooke, gave us more demon understanding, and the action, once it got started, was top notch. So it's not all flaws, there were good bits to it. It's just wasn't what I was hoping for out of Wells and Cleaver. show less

This is wrong. This is exactly what I've always wanted, and exactly what I've always wanted to avoid.

I can't tell my dreams from my nightmares.

Dang it, Dan Wells. I got other books to read. Places to be. Emotions to not be spent on fictional cats that may or may not be dead. At least I tore through this in two sittings.

Shooooot this is was so much more emotionally charged than the last and I loved it for that. Seriously, IS this YA? We're sorta pushing it. Lots of uncomfortable and creepy moments that were scarier than the last's (get me out of this hoooouuuse), John is getting increasingly concerning every time we push him, and the book is growing into its awkward humour so my reactions are less pained smirks and more actual laughs. show more Anything with Brooke and John had me smiling to myself. Also this:

"You've got me," I said. "I killed Dr. Neblin. With an axe. Dipped in poison."
"Very cute," he said, still unsmiling, "but no one is accusing you of killing Dr. Neblin."
"Most people don't use poison," I said, ignoring him, "because they think a big axe blade can do the job on its own. And they're right, but I say they have no style."
"What are you doing?"
"Confessing," I said. "Isn't that what you want?"
"Dr. Neblin wasn't killed with an axe."
"Then it's a good thing I put that poison on there."

However my experience got a good ol dent in it around the last third, when it finally dawned on me: ahhh, okay, yeah, this is one of those casually sexist books where the female characters can only fill the roles that classical casually sexist media says they can. Such as Mom, Love Interest, Hot Popular Girl With Boobs, Battered Spouse #2 (now with extra denial, self-pity, and tears!), Torture Victims turned Murder Victims, and idk, Cool Aunt? I really liked that his mom and Margaret ran the mortuary together, but then I had to be reminded that it was John's dad that finally made them credible and successful. Puke. Hashtag do better, or whatever.

Anyways. Aaaanyways. The structuring of the first book distinctly reminded me of a pilot episode (hard twist, neat-enough ending that anticipates a series cancellation, condensed character arc that'll mirror the rest of the season's trajectory) and this one was an episode further in the season. New characters = the baddie. Monster of the week. Correlation between A plot and B plot. Also short and sweet. It's clean, my dude. It's so clean.

Couple odd moments in this one, though. Did Max forget everything John told him in the last book? Why didn't John just fess up about Mkhai once he knew that, uh, The Villain and him understood who Crowley was? What was significance of the tissue gas? These are kinda small things that I'd probably disregard in a bigger book (except the Max situation. SERIOUSLY, MAX. WHY ARE YOU HERE.) but after all the tied loose ends in the last book, these seem especially noticeable.

Whatever. Still really incredible and fascinating and occasionally jarring (THE PERSON IN THE WALL, I JUST, WHAT THE FUCK?!). John is falling further and further into that nice little corner of "morally ambiguous character that you love to hate" and the story keeps testing him. I swear it's Dan who often mentions on Writing Excuses that he loves setting up a good moral dilemma. Well that's definitely obvious and I'm 100% here for it. Third book is a distinct possibility in my future. Now we've gone FULL BUFFY. show less

John Wayne Cleaver’s journey started in I Am Not a Serial Killer, but his problems get more severe in the second book in Dan Wells’s trilogy, Mr. Monster. The teenage sociopath is very determined not to become the serial killer he longs to be in his heart of hearts, but it’s a challenge. His dark side — Mr. Monster, he calls it — wants out, and it especially wants to kill Brooke, the beautiful girl he drives to school every day. John dreams about Brooke begging him not to hurt her — which is why he hates to sleep. And it’s only gotten worse since John killed a demon. And worse yet because Brooke seems to have a crush on him.

If only she knew. John doesn’t consider himself a hero. But he’s a hero to his town — not show more because he killed the demon, as no one but his mother knows about that, but because the circumstances of that killing tended to suggest that he was trying to save the human who was inhabited by the demon. The demon was the Clayton Killer, which had been killing people in town for months. The demon’s corpse is categorized as the final victim of the Clayton Killer before the killer simply disappeared.

Only one person has ongoing doubts about John: Agent Forman, the FBI agent assigned to the Clayton Killer case. Forman frequently calls John into his office for a chat; as the book opens, he’s interviewed John at least half a dozen times. John has told him everything there is to know, except that a demon attacked him and his mother and he killed it. And, of course, John hasn’t told him about Mr. Monster, the dark side of his psyche.

John is increasingly tempted to start killing people who deserve killing, like his sister’s boyfriend. He lets off steam by setting fires, but manages to avoid killing even the cat that inhabits the abandoned warehouse he wants to burn down. Tending to the corpses in the mortuary managed by his mother and aunt also helps, though his mother has to remind him to refer to the corpses as “him” or “her” instead of “it.”

When new dead female bodies start showing up in town, showing evidence of extensive torture, John is more intrigued than horrified. He is the one who wades into the water to rescue one corpse in case the girl is still alive. He is the one who comes up with ideas about what the killer is up to, which he discusses with Agent Forman. It looks like he might even be the one who Agent Forman suspects committed the murders.

But the problem is deeper than that. This isn’t just another serial killer on the prowl, but a demon come to town to figure out what happened to his fellow demon. And this demon can see into John’s soul, providing him with irresistible temptation. Will John be able to keep his rules intact, and prevent killing anyone despite his longing?

Mr. Monster is highly original, and John Wayne Cleaver is a hero unlike any other I’ve read about. He’s not Dexter or Blackburn, the serial killers brought to life by Jeff Lindsay and Bradley Denton, as those character kill those who (in their estimation) deserve it. John is a sociopath who knows that he’s a sociopath, and doesn’t want to be. He’s a kid who’s as mixed up as any fifteen-year-old teenager, with the extra burden of a mental health diagnosis that terrifies him. And he’s smart — smart enough to figure out how to defeat some of the worst evil he’s ever imagined.

It’s not surprising that Dan Wells mentions in his Acknowledgments that his mother-in-law secretly called his wife to ask if she felt comfortable being alone with him. It’s that kind of book. The JOHN CLEAVER trilogy continues in I Don’t Want to Kill You, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

Originally published at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/horrible-monday-mr-monster-by-dan-wells... show less

“My favorite part of family togetherness is when we aspirate body cavities. What’s yours?”

Mr. Monster takes basically everything that was in I Am Not a Serial Killer and cranks it up another notch. Creepy supernatural serial killer? Check. Long detailed descriptions of embalming? Check. John trying and sort of succeeding in coming to terms with being a sociopath? Check.

It's a solid book. It's still fascinating to feel what I imagine it might be like to be a sociopath. John is growing up and that's not necessarily a good thing. And the final showdown with this book's demon? Terrifying. Pretty much the only negative there is that it ends too soon.

For better or for worse, one thing that Mr. Monster gives was a feeling of wanting show more more. I want to know more about these 'demons', especially after the closing chapter. I want to see more of John trying to figure out how to have a relationship with Brooke. I want to know more about the woman in the wall. There's still one more book in the trilogy, so perhaps we'll get some answers? I hope so. show less

*Spoilers! Read at your own risk!*

Dan Wells, you’ve done it again! I was blown away by the first book’s unique combination of serial killer-based thrills and fantasy horror. While the supernatural element in the first book was well done, the star of the show was the way Wells depicted John's dark urges and emotional detachment.

The follow up not only delves deeper into that, but also into the origins and specifics of the "Demon" from the first book, and introduces another one.

This book, much like the first, can be divided in half. The first half of the first book was all about the mystery of who the killer was and setting up John's sociopathy and family situation. The second half was all about John stalking Mr. Crowley to find a show more way to take him out.

The first half of this book is mostly about John's relationship with Brooke. Forces beyond his control are forcing her into his life, which is dangerous because deep down he wants to put a knife in her. The second half, although it happens farther in than halfway, is about John being abducted by the new demon and brought to his torture-house. While John's there he learns some very interesting things about these Demons (or "gods" as the new Demon identifies himself and his kin as) and how this specific one works, which is very interesting.

The demon from the first book took organs to keep his body from falling apart. The demon from this book tortures people, feeding off their fear, anger, and any other strong emotions. He feels anything that the people around him feel, and is practically a mind-reader because of it. I thought this was a brilliant idea for the new demon. Not only is it cool and interesting in its' own right, but it's made even more so by the fact that John is a sociopath. The demon uses John to "calm down" after feeding off the fear of his other victims, since John hardly feels any emotions at all.

The absolute best part of this book though is the end, and I hope the third book lives up to all the expectations I have for it. At the end John kills the demon, and gets backed up by witness testimony from the other victims in the house, and is declared a hero. He winds up with the demon's cell phone, and finds a name he's heard the demon say before. He calls the number and tells the person who answers that the demon is dead, and that he also killed the demon from the first book.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asks.

And what does John say? Well just the most badass thing ever.

"Because you're next. I'm the demon slayer. Come and get me."

Squeeeeeeee! Now John has a constructive outlet for his dark urges. He can become a demon slayer! So. Freaking. Cool. show less