Ordinary Monsters: The dark and dazzling Sunday Times bestseller and first book in the Talents Trilogy

By a Scottish loch is the Cairndale Institute, where children with special gifts are gathered, these “Talents” walk a line between death and life with abilities to heal themselves, transform their bodies and bend reality. Two orphans, Charlie and Marlowe are two such Talents, collected and taken to the institute, there they will find out who they are and who or what is chasing them.The story travels from Dickensian London in all its squalor to the America’s and beyond in the 1880’s, it is a full of suspense, supernatural forces, it is fantasy horror and it is glorious. The world building is detailed and the characters compelling and complex. The middle quarter of the book is slower paced after the frenetic first half and the explosive finale but I like that, I enjoyed the back stories of the characters, what they had endured, where they came from. This is book one but could be read as a stand-alone, personally after the events at the end of this book I cannot wait for the next one.

Took me a while to pick this up but I was glad I finally did and I'll definitely read the next instalment.It was a slow burn opening I found so I'd recommend people sticking with it - it gets better.Could have done with a bit more depth of characters, could have done more with Jacob Marber and Coulton in particular.Overall though it was a very good read, original enough premise. I also tend to balk at fantasy with kids as the central characters - especially when they end up in a school - but the dark storyline and the themes in Ordinary Monsters made it all work.Can definitely see this is a film too.

At 50% I was ready to give up. Too many characters with not enough depth, too much repetition and a long drawn out multi faceted saga that was wearisome. Then it got better and I carried on . Shades of x-men and Harry Potter. Messy ending set up for a second book . Not cohesive enough for me to enjoy. The characters need rounding and developing and the plot needs clarity and focus. Worth a try but not for me .

Interesting, enjoyable book. Would recommend. Only gripe is that the cover was bashed.

As I'm not a big fan of historical fiction and didn't realise this was when I bought it I didn't think i would enjoy this. It has now become one of my favourite reads this year! So unique, atmospheric and gripping with an amazing collection of characters. The final 'battle' gave me vibes of the battle with Voldemort at Hogwarts! A brilliant gothic, Dickensian supernatural read

I really enjoyed this book. I like it when authors take their time telling the story without overly describing. I also enjoy books with different points of view that merge into one at some point. I was enganged throughout and will be reading book 2 for sure.I gave this book 4/5 because action peaked towards the 3/4 mark then descended into a more subdued pace, even though it was leading to a “final battle”. At points the plot seem to run parallel with Harry Potter’s and this made it a bit disappointing (children that fell they are the only ones who can save the world / with adults trying and failing to redirect them or use them to their own agendas; villain being ex student / brilliant and terrible in its power)

A book that is a challenging read technically but engaging. I haven’t read it all but I am hooked

Thank God that's over.I really ought to develop the courage to abandon books. This should have been an early DNF but instead I plodded on, like walking through sludge.This demonstrates why I don't read much fantasy. It felt cynically like an idea - a good idea - stretched and stretched to support a series.I was drawn to this book by the idea, I should have loved it. But instead I'm just relieved I got to the end. The structure was chaotic, and not in a good way, and the text stodgy.I won't be buying the next one.

MY ⭐️ RATING: 4.75/5FORMAT: Kindle WhispersyncStop everything you’re doing, because Ordinary Monsters is an unforgettable historical fantasy story that just kept getting better as it progressed. The slow methodical pacing of the story to go along with the narration by Ben Onwukwe helped set the dark tone with his deep foreboding voice that was both powerful and pleasant. He gave many of the characters the perfect voice with some fantastic accents to boot, but I will say that it took a little bit of time to get used to his voice with female characters, with it being so deep, they did all tend to have a more manly feel to them, even the young ones… but it was still a top notch narration!Telling a story based in the late 1800’s, in places like London, Tokyo, Scotland, and Mississippi, Miro was able to touch on life during these times with such drastic changes of scenery and interactions with its people, which made me even more excited to start this, especially after seeing comparisons to both X-Men and Umbrella Academy. Both of these make sense because the plot centers around an institute/person collecting orphans with special gifts and helping them learn to use it better. So when I started reading this, I completely understood the comparisons, but as I kept going I realized that those may not be the best to use, I eventually realized that this had way more in common with The New Mutants and Stranger Things, but since New Mutants is technically an X-Men story, that comparison is still there. There were many things with the plot that keyed me in on these, but talking about them would be too spoilery and ruin things for readers that have yet to read this.“The talents, Miss Quicke, are like a bridge between what is living and what is dead.
They exist between states of being. Between worlds, if you will. The drughr is a corruption of all that. A darker talent. The part of it that was living … is gone.”Since this story is written in third person limited pov, there are a lot of characters and POV’s that we get to see throughout the story. Like The New Mutants, Ordinary Monsters has a dark tone with an entire ensemble of unique characters with powers that have been collected to help with their abilities, but the characters reminded me so much of some of the cast of Stranger Things that I couldn’t see them any other way. Marlowe reminded me so much of Eleven, and Alice, who is one tough cookie, reminded me a lot of Harper, but the one that reminded me the most of anyone was Ribs. Ribs was easily my favorite character, she made me giggle too many times, and was the perfect comedic relief for the group in the same way Dustin was for his.There were some other influences that I saw as well, including Star Wars, no, there’s no lightsaber battles here, but there are two characters that had a very Darth Sidious and Darth Vader vibe to them. I thought Miro did an exquisite job of giving a great backstory to show the corruption that lead down the dark path and trying to show some sympathy for the antagonist.The magic system isn’t anything unique, but it was still very good because a lot of the powers remind me of X-Men or New Mutants, which is where a lot of rightful comparisons come from. What I did like is that he uses five power classes but has different powers under each of those, which keeps it somewhat limited but also unique to styles. One of the most unique powers in this story is very Professor X-like which I thought was cool, because it may be the first time I’ve actually seen that type of power used outside of Professor X.

Bonne serie

3.5/ starsA great story with kids with talent, like powers, or bad monsters. A good adventure to kill the one with the bad talent to kill people.

Gute Idee für eine Story, aber irgendwie hat sie mich nicht gefesselt. Lag vielleicht an der Sprache: englisch. Obwohl ich gerne englischsprachige Bücher lese.

Very complex characters and plot line, twists and turns at every step, very emotional in the same time, well written, although it got darker the more you reached the end. I gave it a five because of the fine vocabulary and the detailed features of each character. The keywrasse was a pleasant descriptive surprise !