Monster – A. Lee Martinez

     First off, the summary on the back of this book is completely wrong. I don’t think the person who wrote it read past the first chapter or maybe, *maybe* two. The only thing he got right was the characters’ names. This book is a lot more than a girlfriend from hell pun-making buddy adventure. To begin with Judy (who works the over night shift at a 24 hour grocery store) finds a yeti eating most of the frozen food section. She calls animal control who send out Monster, one of their crypto biological specialists, to take care of the thing. This is where things get interesting; we learn there are three kinds of people in the world: those who can see and work with magic, those who genetically can’t handle the existence of magic and never perceive anything remotely out of the ordinary, and those like poor Judy, stuck in the middle. They can see and believe magic while in the presence of it or magical creatures but hours or even minutes later forget that something strange just happened except they always feel as if something is missing from their lives.

     The story follows Monster home after capturing the yetis and explains the girl friend from hell and how demons can be wandering all over the town. It also goes in-depth into Monster’s personality, an Average Joe who just wants to make enough money to pay for his TV and beer. The next day he gets another call about trolls invading some woman’s apartment. He’s surprised to find out that it’s Judy’s apartment and clearly something weird is going on because strange things keep happening around her, crypto biological creatures showing up way out of their common habitat or in groups when they’ve only ever been seen as solitary or possibly extinct. This eventually leads to a witch and the purpose of the universe. The end is a climatic battle between Evil and Not-so evil since no one could ever really call Monster a *good* guy.

     Witches, demons, and strange creatures! Oh my! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Despite its progressively serious story line, the author managed to keep a light hearted tone. Also, I’ve never read a story where magic was explained/functioned in that way, so I thought it was fairly unique and kept trying to figure out who knew about magic and who didn’t even of the extreme back ground characters who were there only for a scene or two. I can see myself coming back and reading this again several more times just to see what new information I can spot.