Ordinary Monsters: A Novel (The Talents, 1)

There’s another side to Victorian London, a darker side where children exist with special talents, and people see them as monsters. Charlie and Marlowe are two such children, but as they are found by Alice, who works for the Cairndale Institute, they will discover that they are Ordinary Monsters. There are other children like them known as the Talents. What they will also discover is that the barrier between this world and the world of the dead is thin and that they are being hunted in order to open it forever.

This is an incredibly long book, but I can’t imagine it being any shorter. The author needed every one of those pages to draw you into the lives of his characters and to build this deeply atmospheric side of Victorian London. I loved every character in this story, even Jacob, as the lines blurred between good and evil. Even the characters who were evil had some good motivations, and those you thought were good ended up being bad. If you enjoy the supernatural as well as the Victorian era, this book is for you. Don’t be put off by the size; every page drives the story.