Would this post have been a better fit for Spooktober? Welp, yes, but I’m a mood reader and an even moodier reviewer so here we are. And not all these monster and creature books are scary.  I did have another monster books posts back then, with 17 recommendations. 

The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste

A spine-tingling tale rooted in Caribbean folklore that will have readers holding their breath as they fly through its pages.

Corinne La Mer isn’t afraid of anything. Not scorpions, not the boys who tease her, and certainly not jumbies. They’re just tricksters parents make up to frighten their children. Then one night Corinne chases an agouti all the way into the forbidden forest. Those shining yellow eyes that followed her to the edge of the trees, they couldn’t belong to a jumbie. Or could they?

When Corinne spots a beautiful stranger speaking to the town witch at the market the next day, she knows something unexpected is about to happen. And when this same beauty, called Severine, turns up at Corinne’s house, cooking dinner for Corinne’s father, Corinne is sure that danger is in the air. She soon finds out that bewitching her father, Pierre, is only the first step in Severine’s plan to claim the entire island for the jumbies. Corinne must call on her courage and her friends and learn to use ancient magic she didn’t know she possessed to stop Severine and save her island home.

With its able and gutsy heroine, lyrical narration, and inventive twist on the classic Haitian folktale “The Magic Orange Tree,” The Jumbies will be a favorite of fans of Breadcrumbs, A Tale Dark and Grimm, and Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.

I read this because it was the group read BlackSFFathon on twitter, and I really enjoyed the youtube discussion the hosts had afterwords. And I’m glad I ended up reading it because I think it’s just my kind of middle grade. I loved how the characters felt and acted their age. Especially when that meant taking actions that are maybe nonsensical or contradictory from an adult perspective. The kids felt real and they were fun to read about. 

The story is heavily rooted in Caribbean folklore, and it’s got sort of dark fairytale vibes, where despite being for a book for children, the monsters are properly scary. I also kinda sympathize with the Jumbies, even though I don’t agree with their methods. At its origin, the conflict is between a native population (of monsters) and an invading population (of humans) and how reduced habitat makes the monsters desperate and aggressive. I also really liked the different kinds of monsters, I’ve been recently going for fiction that introduces me to myths I hadn’t heard of before, and this one delivered. And the setting of a dark and dangerous forest with these small kids running through it and trying to save the day work well. 

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark returns with Ring Shout, a dark fantasy historical novella that gives a supernatural twist to the Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror.

D. W. Griffith is a sorcerer, and The Birth of a Nation is a spell that drew upon the darkest thoughts and wishes from the heart of America. Now, rising in power and prominence, the Klan has a plot to unleash Hell on Earth.

Luckily, Maryse Boudreaux has a magic sword and a head full of tales. When she’s not running bootleg whiskey through Prohibition Georgia, she’s fighting monsters she calls “Ku Kluxes.” She’s damn good at it, too. But to confront this ongoing evil, she must journey between worlds to face nightmares made flesh–and her own demons. Together with a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter, Maryse sets out to save a world from the hate that would consume it.

I am a huge scaredy-cat, so I was very wary of picking this up, but I eventually gave in, cause everyone was hyping it, and now it’s one of my favorite books of the year. It’s a very strong and vivid story, reading it felt very cinematic to me, so please, please, someone bring it to the screen. 

Ring Shout is fast-paced and drops you right into the action, we meet the main characters as they are waiting for some Ku-Kluxes to fall into their trap. Even though we only spend a little time with the protagonists before the monster-ass-kicking begins, it was very pretty easy to get a good sense of each of the 3 women. Just from the first few pages I really wanted to spend time with them, they were badass and cool, I was curious about what they’d have to say, and they had great weapons. There’s a very powerful magic sword, that I won’t say too much about other than loved the part it played in the plot and how it ended up being used.  I also liked the side characters and was happy when there were a few more chill scenes to get to know them. 

I loved the monsters here, these are not the sympathetic kind, they are scary, vile, evil, they take the worst in people and amplify and feed off it. There are far too many teeth involved. But they were so easy to picture, so creepy and alien. I think the way the story mixes history and fantastical works great. So much oh the horror of the monsters comes from the horror perpetrated by real-life people. 

Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord

Paama’s husband is a fool and a glutton. Bad enough that he followed her to her parents’ home in the village of Makendha, now he’s disgraced himself by murdering livestock and stealing corn. When Paama leaves him for good, she attracts the attention of the undying ones – the djombi – who present her with a gift: the Chaos Stick, which allows her to manipulate the subtle forces of the world.

Unfortunately, not all the djombi are happy about this gift: the Indigo Lord believes this power should be his and his alone, and he sets about trying to persuade Paama to return the Chaos Stick.

Chaos is about to reign supreme…

I was listening to Redemption in Indigo about the same time as I was reading The Jumbies and the supernatural beings here are called djombies. I’ve done some light googling and I couldn’t find any mention of djombies outside this book. I don’t know that I have a point to this entire paragraph other than it was a bit confusing to me. Jumbies though also showed up in Brown Girl in the Ring and a mention in Ring Shout. The djombies are also a large group of magical creatures that can be stronger or less powerful, human-looking or not. A trickster spider makes an appearance, I’m always a fan of trickster spiders. 

Right, back to the actual book. This was my BLM bingo pick for hopeful, optimistic book, and between the theme of redemption, the story-telling like narrator, the mentions of excellent cooking and the soothing narration by Robin Miles, it was all very chill and calming. The in-story narrator is so cool, it’s always like she’s sitting down with you, conspiratorially letting you in on secrets. I was kind of expecting a different character to be the one getting redeemed, so it was nice to get surprised by the story’s twists and turns. Despite there being a lot of atmosphere descriptions, it was hard for me to place the book in time and space, a lot of the story could be set anytime, at one point the characters travel and we get a sense of a much wider world. 

Maya and the Rising Dark by Renna Barron

Twelve-year-old Maya’s search for her missing father puts her at the center of a battle between our world, the Orishas, and the mysterious and sinister Dark world.

Twelve-year-old Maya is the only one in her South Side Chicago neighborhood who witnesses weird occurrences like werehyenas stalking the streets at night and a scary man made of shadows plaguing her dreams. Her friends try to find an explanation—perhaps a ghost uprising or a lunchroom experiment gone awry. But to Maya, it sounds like something from one of Papa’s stories or her favorite comics.

When Papa goes missing, Maya is thrust into a world both strange and familiar as she uncovers the truth. Her father is the guardian of the veil between our world and the Dark—where an army led by the Lord of Shadows, the man from Maya’s nightmares, awaits. Maya herself is a godling, half orisha and half human, and her neighborhood is a safe haven. But now that the veil is failing, the Lord of Shadows is determined to destroy the human world and it’s up to Maya to stop him. She just hopes she can do it in time to attend Comic-Con before summer’s over.

Maya and the Rising Dark was not my kind of MG. I don’t think it’s the book’s fault, just that I’m not the target audience, so through the entire book I was a lot more interested in the adult characters and the mysteries they hid than the children protagonists. I loved the world, the Orisha mythology and cosmology, the gods we meet, and the stories of them we learn, but I didn’t really click with the kids and their problem-solving methods, and was going all “listen to your parents” at them. 

That aside, I think this is a great book for young readers and I wouldn’t hesitate to rec it. I loved the way it talks about a whole mythology, that I haven’t seen much of in the media and which sounds really awesome. There are a lot of demi-gods, which I think might be a draw for fans of the Percy Jackson series (I haven’t gotten round to that one yet). For Maya the stories she grew up with turn out to be real, and then some, and I remember that was one of my favorite themes to read about as a kid. The plot was action-packed, I liked how Maya’s magic weapon was a staff and we saw her training with it and working with it. 

Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire

Cryptid, noun: Any creature whose existence has not yet been proven by science. See also “Monster.”

Crytozoologist, noun: Any person who thinks hunting for cryptids is a good idea. See also “idiot.”

Ghoulies. Ghosties. Long-legged beasties. Things that go bump in the night…

The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity—and humanity from them.

Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she’d rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. Sounds pretty simple, right?

It would be, if it weren’t for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family’s old enemies, the Covenant of St. George. When a Price girl meets a Covenant boy, high stakes, high heels, and a lot of collateral damage are almost guaranteed.

To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone’s spreading rumors about a dragon sleeping underneath the city…

I picked this one up when I needed a fun popcorny read and it delivered. Snarky-young-female-protagonist in skimpy-outift kicks monster (and other) butts. Definitely got some Buffy vibes from her. The action is set in New York where MC is working as a waitress, participating in ballroom dancing competitions and handling the supernatural population. Sometimes she protects them, sometimes she protects people from them, depending on who’s trying to eat whom. There are some really fun bits of cryptic lore, and Dragon Princesses might be my favorite species.

It was a quick easy read, I loved adding ballroom dancing to the monster hunting mix and how the Pierce’s have a bit of Addams’ family vibes. From the outside they’re weird but really the siblings are tying each other to the couch to learn important survival skills. And mom and grandma go spelunking in hell. I also liked how things moved along pretty quickly in the romantic aspect of the book.