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  • Ordinary Monsters

  • The Talents, Book 1
  • By: J M Miro
  • Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
  • Length: 25 hrs and 21 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (120 ratings)
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Ordinary Monsters

By: J M Miro
Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
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Summary

Bloomsbury presents Ordinary Monsters by J M Miro, read by Ben Onwukwe.

The first in a captivating new historical fantasy series, Ordinary Monsters introduces the Talents with a catastrophic vision of the Victorian world, and the gifted, broken children who must save it.

There in the shadows was a figure in a cloak, at the bottom of the cobblestone stair, and it turned and stared up at them as still and unmoving as a pillar of darkness, but it had no face, only smoke....

1882. North of Edinburgh, on the edge of an isolated loch, lies an institution of crumbling stone, where a strange doctor collects orphans with unusual abilities. In London, two children with such powers are hunted by a figure of darkness—a man made of smoke.

Charlie Ovid discovers a gift for healing himself through a brutal upbringing in Mississippi, while Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight, glows with a strange bluish light. When two grizzled detectives are recruited to escort them north to safety, they are confronted by a sinister, dangerous force that threatens to upend the world as they know it.

What follows is a journey from the gaslit streets of London to the lochs of Scotland, where other gifted children—the Talents—have been gathered at Cairndale Institute, and the realms of the dead and the living collide. As secrets within the Institute unfurl, Marlowe, Charlie and the rest of the Talents will discover the truth about their abilities and the nature of the force that is stalking them: that the worst monsters sometimes come bearing the sweetest gifts.

©2022 Ides of March Creative Inc. (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Ordinary Monsters is a towering achievement: a dazzling mountain of wild invention, Dickensian eccentrics, supernatural horrors and gripping suspense. Be warned...once you step into this penny dreadful to end all penny dreadfuls, you'll never want to leave." (Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box)

"From the very first page, you're pulled into a world of hope and fear, dark and light, the known and the unimaginable. A world that is equal parts magic and pain. Readers should prepare themselves: there's nothing ordinary about Ordinary Monsters." (Alma Katsu, author of The Fervor and Hunger)

What listeners say about Ordinary Monsters

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

More suited to a YA listener maybe?

I really enjoyed the first 18+ hours of this story but lost the plot with only 7 hours to go when I found I no longer understood (or, sadly, cared) what was going on ... I enjoyed the sections set in the USA, Victorian England and Japan, especially the historical aspects, but then started to find the plot confusing ... I'm probably too old to appreciate this type of fantasy fiction which is a shame as I thought it was very well written - really brilliant narrator too ...

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A beautifully written.......

... deep delve into its characters and other world. I loved it. There are a lot of characters in this book, but because the author did a fantastic job taking his time letting us, the reader/listener getting to know them, I found myself emotionally connecting to them and this is the real art of a book. It takes you out of yourself, you're somewhere else, with the children as they face everything from racism in the USA to poverty on the streets of London, to having the one person they should be able to trust, betray them.

Read by Ben Onwukwe, he gives every character their own voice and has a genuine empathy for the children as they traverse their very singular worlds, he is a wonderful reader and the perfect choice for this book.

J M Miro is one to watch, this is a future classic in the making.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

What a disappointment

I really wanted to like this book, and it does have some really good characters, and puts them into interesting situations. But here, diversity is its main problem. By moving characters from the USA, and from Japan to Scotland, the level of research should have been higher to render the narrative believable.

For example, the use of the term “row house” to describe a house in London in not accurate to the period. Such a house should be called a “terrace”. Likewise, the form of the address “Nichol Street West” is not to be found on any nineteenth-century map of London that I have consulted.

And in Japan, we are told there is a mahjong den, naming a game which was essentially Chinese until the twentieth century. There may have been a nineteenth-century mahjong gambling den in Tokyo, but it would have probably noted the differing rules and been called a “Riichi Mahjong” den. If this seems like splitting hairs, then consider; this reader thought a general Far East motif was being used indiscriminately - cultural appropriation at its most inaccurate.

This book is flawed from its core. The sentence construction is tendentiously Victorian, with layers of metaphors, and “similes unlike” as Pope puts it: “his ears stood out like dials” ??? What is that supposed to draw in my imagination?

More egregious are the borrowings. The book follows so many predecessors, many of which have been named in other reviews, I’ll only go through the ones that bothered me. “Mr Coulton” sounds very like “Mrs Coulter” from Pullman, as does the reference to “Dust”, however differently it is treated. Likewise, the part of Marlowe, who is the boy who survived … Oh dear, do I have to make the comparison? Yet even this is compounded with Alice who is “the weapon we did not have before …” in our fight against - Voldem - er sorry, Jacob.

To crown the disappointment, is the chapter title of the train sequence, Chapter 11 “Shining Boy” spoiled the effect. For 58 minutes I was waiting for the denouement, which came, just as the chapter title said it would. The boy shined as he had done before and held off the dark. So there was simply no suspense.

“Ordinary Monsters” needs some serious editing on all levels, if it is to be anything more than ordinary, and I hope Price sorts this out before shedding more dross onto the world in volumes 2 and 3.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

As a Scot, the accents didn't bother me.

It was ok, wandered somewhat but I would give a sequel a read ...... probably.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent

Wonderful story and audiobook.
There's a fantastic depth to the story and its world, told by a narrator I could listen to forever. The 'Scottish accents' are painful, but it's so, so worth it.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Rollicks along but rather wearying..

like an amalgamation of X men, Harry Potter and snippets of the classics.
A good yarn, well performed but slightly spoiled by the narrator's godawful, one and only, non geographical "Scottish" accent - where is the R in "thought"? It was all hoots mon and Janet get yer tits oot the purridge - surely someone could have taught him a couple of real ones??
It it least brought humour where there wasn't meant to be any....

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Terrible accents bit sitck with it!

About Chapter 15 you think this book will never end and you'll consider stopping as the narrators terrible attempt at accents (Americans straight from The Simpsons, Cockneys straight from Mary Poppins and don't even start me on the Scottish ones....) and seemingly random bits of info and characters get dropped everywhere, make it drag.

However, stick with it! All the randomness comes together in the last 5 chapters and it all makes sense... Will wait for the sequel. That is If the narrator goes to Scotland to listen to what they actually do sound like!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Loved it!

I was taken back to childhood. Such a vivid world and immense creation … cannot wait for part 2!!

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Great wordlbuilding, very longwinded prose

The way the material is read is sublime, and I thoroughly enjoyed the alternate history world. The story is however often bogged down by endless narration of surroundings, stances, attitudes and by the many many thoroughly unlikeable heroes and foes. Even the kids have little to no agency and are generally just swept along and being drowned. Not sure if I'll even bother buyibg the sequel, although I'll be looking for more audio books by this narrator. Overall it leaves me unsatisfied.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Too long

As others have noted I feel this story is let down by the length of the book. It started off well but it simply became a slog to get to the end, by which time I did not care about the characters or the outcome in the slightest.

In general I found the narration to be quality, though some accents attempted were not wholly successful, and the narrator did have a strange approach to children’s voices, Charlie’s in particular, as if they had laryngitis.

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