Review of "Monsters Arise! (Holiday Spirit Book Three)" by John DeGuire

Score: 92/100 (9.2 out of 10)

Monsters Arise! is a viciously imaginative, blood-soaked, yet surprisingly tender horror fantasy by John DeGuire. It is the third installment in DeGuire's Holiday Spirit series, which we've frankly had a love-hate relationship with over the course this week.

There are things that this series does well including breathing new life into classic characters like Dracula, Van Helsing, Frankenstein's monster, Jekyll & Hyde, Erik (the Phantom of the Opera), Dorian Gray, the witch from Hansel & Gretel, the Invisible Man, the creature from the Black Lagoon, sasquatch, Quasimodo, and even King Kong (to name a few). It does this in a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-sorta way: imaginging what would happen if all of these odd balls with interesting backgrounds, abilities, and proclivities had to either coexist or clash. This series tosses all these icons into the same sandbox, but with a lot less restraint. This series really has a everything and the kitchen sink approach, as we mentioned in our review of Destroy All Monsters, which can be a double-edged sword.

This book and series can be a bit... much. We haven't even mentioned the returning human kid characters yet.

This book now introduces Sherlock Holmes and Watson into the series. And, naturally, with them comes the evil genius and Holmes' arch nemesis, Professor Moriarty (cause, of course), and Dr. Moreau from another H.G. Wells novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Wow, the author must really love H.G. Wells (with the Invisible Man and all)! Well, there's a lot to love.

Moreau is one of the more evil and disturbing characters in the series, on the level of the depravity of Bridgett Bishop in the first book or perhaps even exceeding it (at least Bridgett had a somewhat sympathetic motivation to want to eat people). In fact, as a character, Moreau effectively acts as the Bridgett Bishop of this book: creating and pushing forth the beast folk (grotesque, animal-like hybrids). His labs are full of in-between horrors, half made and half broken, and he treats them like disposable prototypes rather than patients. The pig orderlies, the hyena nurse, the stitched together bodies that only exist to be torn apart again, all reinforce that theme. Where other villains want power, Moreau seems to want pure control over flesh itself, and the book never really lets him off the hook with a sob story or a sad past. He is simply monstrous.

Moriarty, by contrast, often feels more like the boardroom version of evil. He is the quiet partner at the top of the food chain, the one whose initial appears on the amulets and whose money and influence run through governments, militaries, and corporations. Together, Moriarty and Moreau form what we might call the M and M axis of this series, one that reaches from palace basements to Arctic vaults to black sites in Vermont. They are not just villains in a cape and a lab coat. They are the embodiment of systems that see everything, including Dracula and his children, as assets and leverage.

Holmes and Watson are interesting additions to this mess. Bringing them into a story that already features Dracula, Frankenstein, King Kong, and company is a very risky move. At first, they seem like reassuring familiar faces and potential allies for the Killington kids. Holmes is brilliant and unflappable, Watson is loyal and grounded, and there is a nice little thrill in seeing them step into this crossover universe. The longer the book goes on, though, the more you realize that Holmes in particular is not the comforting detective that popular culture has trained us to expect. His proximity to Moriarty, the cryptic way he handles information, the trail of clues Emma eventually starts piecing together, all point to a man whose moral compass does not line up neatly with the kids or the monsters. Without spoiling every beat, his arc ends up being one of the bleaker and more uncomfortable aspects of the book, and we are still deciding if we like that choice or simply respect it.

What really saves all of this from collapsing under its own weight is the monstrous little family at the center. Dracula with his new human heart, Aoife with her fierce maternal instincts, their twins Bleddyn and Asra, and Ralph acting as the invisible uncle, they give this book an emotional spine. Dracula is not invincible any more. He gets tired, he has chest pain, he has to worry about whether his heart is going to give out at the worst possible moment. Aoife is constantly torn between nurturing and slaughter, between the soft glow of feeding her child and the feral rage of tearing through the people who took her kids. Bleddyn and Asra are both adorable and frightening, children who climb and cuddle and watch cartoons, yet who also show a chilling capacity for predation when pushed. Ralph and Hope, with their fragile, awkward romance, add yet another layer of humanity to a book full of nonhuman characters.

DeGuire also continues to impress with his set pieces. The open heart surgery on Dracula reads like a medical textbook from a nightmare. Dracula riding a vampiric woolly mammoth toward a frozen cathedral guarded by Yetis feels like something that should be airbrushed on the side of a van. The Devil’s Bunghole sequence with its shrieking undead infants is as grotesque and uncomfortable as it sounds, and it is topped off by Frankenstein punting the little horrors like footballs. Emma’s rampage with the stolen Humvee through the wind farm is destructive, chaotic, and somehow still feels like a teenager making an impossibly hard choice. Aoife’s raid on the N.I.C.E. facility is probably the most brutal sequence in the entire series, and it leads to the surreal image of two hybrid toddlers watching Scooby Doo reruns while their mother fights and kills for them in the next room.

Of course, all of that spectacle comes at a cost. This book is graphic. There is blood, surgery, bodily violation, and creative cruelty on almost every other page. We literally have Saul punting undead zombie babies and being wowed by his hang time. If the first two Holiday Spirit books already tested your limits, this one will probably push you over them. The tonal shifts can be jarring as well. One moment you are in a tender scene about disability and being seen, the next you are in a gross out gag with zombie babies or a jokey aside about hang time. Sometimes those shifts feel clever and transgressive. Sometimes they feel like the book is undercutting its own emotional power.

The size of the cast and the number of plot threads can also make this feel overstuffed. You have Dracula and Frankenstein in the Arctic, Aoife and the twins in hiding, Ralph and Hope’s slow burn romance, the Killington kids, Holmes and Watson, Moreau and Moriarty, and the entire apparatus of N.I.C.E. and the beast folk. Readers who love maximalist world building and the feeling that anything can show up on the next page will be delighted. Readers who prefer a tighter, more focused narrative might occasionally feel lost or fatigued.

We know we've complained a lot in these past three reviews, but it's at least nice to see continuity. Saul Frankenstein, for example continues to be a lady's man and one of the emotional hearts of the series (because he does carry a lot).

We also got a lot of comedy and humor. For example, the Yeti/Saul's wife is referred to as "his hairy wife." That was an interesting and funny choice of phrasing. There's even seems to be a reference to "Lose Yourself" by Eminem ("his arms were sweaty"), which made us chuckle.

There is an extended action sequence in which the kids hijack a Humvee and Emma drives it like a Grand Theft Auto level into a wind turbine tower, toppling a whole row of turbines like metallic dominoes in order to disrupt the enemy’s operation.

It's actually nice, by the way, to see the kids that Bridgett victimized in the first book, especially Annie (one of the series' highlights) be featured in a positive, proactive way.

In the end, though, Monsters Arise! won us over more than it frustrated us. The emotional beats hit hard enough, and the imaginative horror set pieces are wild enough, that the rough edges feel like part of the package rather than simple mistakes. This is not a neat or polite book. It is messy, gory, and trying to do a lot at once, sometimes too much. Yet when it zeroes in on Dracula’s faltering heart, Aoife’s furious love, Ralph and Hope learning to see each other, or the Killington kids making impossible choices, it becomes something oddly beautiful in spite of itself.

Check it out on Amazon!