Monsters In Our Wake

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Title: Monsters In Our Wake

Release date: February 15, 2017

So, after reading ‘Return to Dyatlov Pass’ and ‘The Bear Who Wouldn’t Leave,’ I knew I needed more Moncrieff. ‘Monsters In Our Wake’ intrigued me, but truthfully also worried me. I personally, am not always a fan of water based horror. Not sure why, or what it is, but a big part of it I think, is due to the limited scope the stories often follow.

Don’t get me wrong – authors do some amazing work with water – but at times it can feel all the same. Crew on a ship or in a research vessel/lab. Creature attacks. They try to escape/survive. Some do, some don’t.

And while ‘Monsters In Our Wake’ does have that aspect, Moncrieff added some truly great plot points. We have a very strong female protagonist. We get a great environmental narrative and in a very appealing turn – we get an entire story arc weaved throughout from the monsters POV. It worked magically.

Here is my 5 star Goodreads review, posted April 14, 2019:

“I first discovered Moncrieff’s work through Return to Dyatlov Pass. That book was being praised in the online book community and having loved the movie Devil’s Pass, also based on the incident, I jumped on it. I had a great time with it and really enjoyed the companion piece that Moncrieff had in the Hellhole Anthology last year.

I’m a proud Canadian and when I find out an author is Canadian, I always prioritize their works. So once I found out Moncrieff was a fellow Canuck living in Winnipeg, I also snagged The Bear Who Wouldn’t Leave as well as the first few books in the Ghost Writer’s series. I loved The Bear, but haven’t managed to get to the series yet.

At the time I also snagged this book, Monsters in Our Wake. On a recent trip out west for a professional conference, I decided to have a bit of a creature-feature theme for my reads and this was third up, after Master of the Forest and Antarctic Ice Beasts.

When I read Return to Dyatlov Pass, I loved Moncrieff’s character development and ease of creating tension and stress. I ultimately ended up giving it a 4 star rating because I found a few areas felt stunted and wished the book was longer. Not the case here. I message with J.H. a bit, picking her brain about some things and just generally chatting about life. When I mentioned this one was on my docket, she replied that she hoped I enjoyed because it was a bit ‘different.’ After having read it, I know what she meant!

This story takes place entirely at sea, on The Cormorant, a prototype drilling vessel. We are introduced to Flora, an oceanographer who’s been hired on to ensure ideal drilling locations. We meet the Greek Captain, the engineers Thor and Liam and then a small supporting cast of ship crew; Frank and George.

The ‘different’ part of the book is Moncrieff telling a large portion of the tale through the eyes of one of the sea creatures, named Nokken. We meet his wife and son (who reminded me of Joffrey from GOT) and learn a bit of the creatures back story.

Moncrieff does a fantastic job of stacking the odds against Flora as well as the humans in general. The crew themselves are a misogynistic bunch, quickly laying the blame on everything that goes wrong on Flora. “Its bad luck to have a girl on board,” is a tried and true sailor theme, but in this story, that’s probably the ‘nicest’ statement directed towards her. Time and time again, Flora responds and works hard to earn the respect she deserves. I enjoyed the sprinkling of back story for Flora and her son, giving her the much needed ‘why’ for her survival.

And while I found Dyatlov had a few stunted portions that detracted a bit from the flow, Moncrieff delivers here, letting every scenario play out, sometimes in all its magnificent gore-filled glory.

Moncrieff has catapulted herself into one of my “must-read” authors and has planted herself firmly behind Andrew Pyper in my favourite Canadian Author list. I can’t wait for her first release from Flame Tree Press in October, but in the meantime, I’ll be catching up by reading her Ghost Writers Series.”

Sounds good yeah?

Moncrieff delivered such a strong story that I was chomping at the bit to dive into her other releases.

Which is exactly what I did!

If you want to check out ‘Monsters In Our Wake’ you can find a copy here;