The Isle of Blood (3) (The Monstrumologist)

I am getting more and more enamored of this series. I'll be real, I may have rushed the last couple of pages of this one to get it in under the wire for 2016. NO REGRETS. I think this was maybe the best one yet. It was a slow burner, and I usually find that a slow burner has a bigger payoff. Not always (I'm looking at you, Divergent series...slow burn to a sad little puff of smoke), but this one had a pretty decent payoff. Most of the book is spent in the travel and the explanation, not in the chase of the thing itself.

It begins with a nest being delivered via a poisoned man to the doctor. Turns out, the man is poisoned, just not in the way he thought. He thought he was poisoned by Dr. Jack Kearns but in actual fact he is poisoned by the nest he cannot help but touch. The nest, the nidus, belongs to the Typhoeus ex magnificum, the crowning achievement of monstrumology that has yet to be truly discovered. Only rumors and speculations and the occasional story make its way to the halls of the monstrumarium, and Pellinore Warthrop is determined to seek it out.

I think I enjoyed this one for many reasons. Firstly, Will Henry is really coming into his own as a complex, intriguing character. He has all these nightmares about his parents' death, the doctor leaving him behind; he has these delightful spells of delirium that are lovingly, poetically described. And he is becoming exactly what the good doctor doesn't want him to become: a true monstrumologist. It seems as though Warthrop is becoming more Will Henry and Will Henry is becoming more Warthrop. I am more and more enjoying the interplay between the two of them, and I love how two-sided their relationship is. They both hate and love each other fiercely and cannot express it other than the use of the phrase "indispensable to me". Hell, it's better than most romances! The "romance" of this book leaves me cold, and rather like Will Henry I find myself saying, "I don't like her" and "she bothers me" and "she's mean". Meh. Everything else is so fun and interesting, you can overlook Lilly Bates. There are also some delightful cameos -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a reference to a Poe poem I simply simpered over. Oh, and this one is just as delightfully disgusting as all the other ones! There was at least one point where I cried aloud, texted my husband immediately what had happened, and put the book down for a minute because I was just so shocked at what had happened.

I loved it. I can't wait for the last one. Except I can, because then it's over and I have to find something new to read. The eternal struggle for the voracious reader. Happy 2017!

This one got very...existential. I thoroughly enjoyed the first part of the book, with the mystery and vague villains lurking. Four and a half stars. But the last part...it really got too utterly heavy and serious and, frankly, self-important, and I felt it was a disconnect from the previous books and the previous half of this book. Two stars. So I'll mush those together and give it three stars. A kind of satisfying read if you're looking for Nietzsche and absinth. The shocking gore is still present from previous books, it just starts to take itself too seriously.