Book Review: Temporary Monsters by Ian Rogers
Title: Temporary Monsters
Author: Ian Rogers
Release date: January 1st, 2009
As you’ve probably come to learn if you’ve followed my reviews – I’m horribly slow at reading physical books, but burn through everything else when reading on my Kindle. It’s just the reality of the way my life flows and our collective family schedule, but there’s times when I do my best to read a physical release and such is the case with this one. Not too long ago, I acquired a signed copy of Ian’s stunning collection, ‘Every House is Haunted,’ from him and he kindly sent three chapbooks as well. The other day, while reorganizing some of my signed books, I saw these and decided I needed to get them read, and the only way to do so was to make the effort to pull them from the shelf and have them sit in front of me on the coffee table. Over the course of about a week, I snuck in five or ten minutes randomly to get this one read and boy was it fun!
What I Liked: Ian has created a wonderful world of interconnected novellas that I previously described in my review of ‘Go Fish’ as something like the BPRD meets The X-Files. And this one, featuring Felix Renn was a really great slab of detective/supernatural/noir storytelling.
The Black Lands is a world just beyond ours, where you access it through portals this side tries to keep closed. But that doesn’t always happen and in ‘Temporary Monsters’ we get a glimpse of what happens when that world over there mixes with the world of high-profile drug use.
This is only about 45 pages long and Rogers wastes no time throwing us into the fire. Renn is out for dinner with his wife/soon-to-be-ex-wife, when the ‘next-big-thing’ movie actor comes in. Within minutes, we realize somethings off and suddenly Renn is caught in the mix as they change into a vampire and he must act. But that’s not the end of things. No, we see one of their co-stars change too and it all seemingly leads down the same path, to the same person who supplied them with an illegal substance.
This felt like reading a black and white version of ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit.’ You could practically smell the cologne mixed with cigarette’s and hear the expensive liquor being poured into each glass. The atmosphere was phenomenal and that seems to be a Rogers trademark in his story telling.
The ending was great, giving us a supernatural blast of action and does leave that door open for me.
What I didn’t like: Even knowing this was a chapbook and that it would be over quickly, I still desperately wanted more. Rogers is such a deft and talented storyteller, that once he hooks you, you never want those hooks to come out.
Why you should buy this: So, this seems to be a limited chapbook that was released sometime ago. Currently it looks like you can get the Ebook through Rakuten, so that is the way you may need to go. But as for the book itself, the story within was such a fun ride, making me very excited to dive into the next chapbook, ‘The Ash Angels,’ and see what hijinks Felix gets up to again!
5/5
