Review: Just Try Not to Die by Gareth K. Pengelly

Just Try Not to Die by Gareth K. Pengelly

Many monster-hunter-style series are built around a sort of chosen one—a hero in the making who will protect the world from nefarious supernatural creatures. Pengelly’s Brian Helsing series is just this sort of book with one major twist—Brain Helsing has no traditionally heroic qualities and apparently no aptitude for learning them. While geeky and not-unintelligent, he hasn’t an athletic bone in his body and he doesn’t have the mindset that one traditionally associates with the sort of person who would go seek out monsters threatening civilization. In fact, he’s so not the hero that the good guys have to physically coerce him into training and going on missions.

 

So it’s an unusual sort of book and it takes too long for the story to develop, but Pengelly does manage to weave Brian’s unheroic nature and past into a solution for the ultimate problem in the novel in a convincing and frankly touching way. Everyone who’s watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer or read anything in this genre has wondered what they would do if they were chosen as the slayer. This book offers a more plausibly realistic answer to that question than many of us would wish was true. It’s a fun read with a lot of potential to be even more so as the series progresses.

 

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