J. M. Miro
Bloomsbury
Otago Daily Times, September 29th 2022
The first book in J. M. Miro’s new historical fantasy series, a gothic hybrid between The Umbrella Academy and Penny Dreadful, certainly lives up to its title. At its heart is the Cairndale Academy, home to the reclusive Dr Berghast, who has spent his life ‘collecting’ children whose necromantic powers see them shunned by their own communities. The story, set in the late 1800s, follows the latest intake, who find themselves pawns in a battle for power between Berghast and the drughr, an ancient, feminine adversary who threatens to destroy the wall between life and death.
The idea behind the children’s abilities, which involve the manipulation of lifeless tissue, is fascinating: Some can ‘borrow’ from their future lives to heal themselves. Others weaponise the dust derived from their own necrotic cell. One lonely boy even creates a flesh golem as a companion. The rapidly-paced plot, which frequently switches between narrators and times, is full of cinematically florid fights intended to grab and hold attention. But the sheer excess of melodrama that suffuses the novel is wearying to the point of interminability, the writing as brick-like as the book’s physical dimensions. Sad to say, Ordinary Monsters left me dead.
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