Eric Margrave is a Monster Hunter ($200 per hour for
standard jobs, $250 for non-standard, $300 for Ichor-covered slimy tentacle
beasts plus expenses. And he doesn’t do demons, dragons, liches, demon-dragons,
no dragon-liches, no demon-dragon-liches and absolutely no sentient bread). He’s
one of the best in the business. And he can go on a five hour tangent if
someone mentions the word “gelatin.”
After picking up Lydia (a 19th century society
lady), a Guardian spirit in a confusing haunting in one of his safe houses and
new base of operations, Eric is ready to hit the road to help those in need (so
long as they can pay. And if they can’t pay, he reminds you that the other
victims of the monster probably left some stuff behind you can loot – hint hint),
from angry ghosts, to furious nature spirits, werewolves, zombie armies, evil
witches and annoying gremlins, Eric’s seen it all and is more than capable of
bring it down. With Lydia to help and point out the many many many things he
does wrong.
And he can look cool while doing it. Always essential.
This book is a series of short stories. And when I
reached the end I was deeply disappointed that there wasn’t more. And this is
from someone who doesn’t like short stories. I generally find they lack meta,
they lack overarching epicness and they’re just not long enough to develop the
characters and the themes and the story.
This collection worked because the themes and characters continue throughout all the short stories – and they’re really well maintained. You can tell that they were written at different times and their voices and personalities definitely develop from the first to the last as the author finds his writing style, but it is really well maintained and works to make the book feel like one, solid, continued work rather than a series of short stories.
It doesn’t have an epic overarching story – but it doesn’t need one. That’s not what this book is about. This is about the often dangerous, often exciting, usually weird and complicated life of a monster hunter. There are no epic overarching plots because usually hunting the monsters doesn’t involve that – he shows up, finds the gribbly thing, whatever it is, kills the gribbly thing, collects his fee and goes home. There’s no need to have a big overarching plot because that’s not what the monsters do. Most of them are happy to terrorise a local village without bringing an apocalypse to the whole world.
So what fills the gap, how does it still work? Firstly, the stories themselves are original and fun. The take on the ghosts (feeding on fear and getting more dangerous), various nature spirits, werewolves, demons et al is original and interesting with some immensely fun twists. Like werewolves not being considered a threat because EVERYONE knows how to kill a werewolf! Or Eric’s utter contempt for zombie apocalypses and how little chance they’d have to really take over the nation. Or his very original take on killing zombies. Each story is novel enough, different enough and twisty enough not to need an overarching plot to keep it interesting – they’re all interesting in their own right.
What also works are the characters. Eric and Lydia.
Individually they’re excellent – Eric is one of the funniest, most ridiculous,
zany, more than a little eccentric but still lethal monster hunters you could
ever hope to read. He’s such immense fun, takes nothing seriously while, at the
same time, never losing that sense of just how dangerous he is. In fact, his
being so blasé is worked well into showing just how dangerous the man is – he’s
seen most of it before, he’s confident in his ability to kill things, he can afford
to have fun at it. He can afford to be a little silly. And… when it’s really
necessary, all that fun and joy and silliness will just fall away and that
lethal steel will peek out, reminding you that this man is, at the root, a
contract killer with lethal skills. He doesn’t have to show them off, because
he’s that good.
Lydia frequently asks him if he’s quite sane – and I think part of his portrayal is that Eric isn’t, not entirely. We’ve seen his childhood heavily hinted at in one of the short stories, we’ve had frequent references to his past experiences as a hunter, fighting for his life against everything he can including demons (which is why he won’t fight them any more) and his general lonely, unsupported existence all adds up to be a strong indication that he isn’t exactly neuro-typical any more. But all of this is shown rather than told, through both his erratic behaviour and showing the experiences that we would expect to lead Eric to this state. It doesn’t need long speeches of his pain, his terrible experiences or how it has damaged him – the end result is shown through
Does it work? Usually. Sometimes I think it falls flat. Eric goes from being hilariously eccentric to a desperate clown who is trying too hard. It gets too contrived, too convoluted, too childish to work and the suspension of disbelief shatters. It happens more towards the beginning of the book than the end and I suspect it is the author getting used to Eric’s voice and developing him as a character, but even in the last story there are moments when Eric just pushes a little too far to be believable. I think it’s an issue that is getting better and I hope in future books Eric will stay on this side of the believable.
