A Taste for Monsters

As addicted as I am to all things Victorian, I was as intrigued as I was leery of a story that combined Jack the Ripper and Joseph Merrick (the Elephant Man). A quick fact check through my brain proved the timeline possible and by the end of the book I was glad to see how the author, Matthew J. Kirby, paid proper respect to it. Everything he created was totally plausible (as long as you are accepting of a little supernatural business...which was also very Victorian). The setting and characters were well presented and easily imagined in the reader's mind. There were some tense scenes (also easily imagined in detail) but since I am fond of the dark and creepy, the subject matter did not disturb me. Some readers should consider themselves cautioned. ;-)

On a side note, two characters in this story talked about Jane Austin's Northanger Abbey, referring to its 'haunted' passages. Personally, I don't care for Ms. Austin (I know, I know) but not remembering much about Northanger Abbey, I thought maybe I had missed something. I pulled up a LibriVox recording of it and gave it a fresh listen. Nope. Still don't like her. But thanks, Matthew J. Kirby, for refreshing my love of Mary Shelley, the mother of dark fiction. I think she would've appreciated your story.