First off, I have to warn you that Monster by Frank Peretti was not my favorite book by any means. I have yet to read anything else by Peretti, so don’t take my word as a judgement on him as an author. I’ve heard he’s quite amazing. Monster, unexpectedly, did not make the cut with me.Why write about it then?
Because it’s an amazing story.
It just wasn’t that scary. It’s a shame really.
Monster is about a couple who choose to go hardcore camping for a vacation. Rebecca (Beck) and Reed decide they need some time away from the world with just each other and their friends Capella and Sing. However, as the title suggests things go array. Before Capella and Sing can meet up with them, the two camp out in the woods and are surrounded by some type of monster making high-pitched, ear-shattering screams.
It's a classic campfire story, so I thought it might have a bit of suspense, a bit of horror, and overall be a good scare. However, a bit of suspense was about all it had.
The first couple of chapters are great! They reel you in till you’re too hooked to put it down. But then…Something happens…The action…The tension…it just sort of disappears.
It's not that Peretti goes on to write absolute nonsense or that the pages go blank until the last couple of chapters, not at all. In fact, those monotonous middle chapters are vital to understanding the storyline. Actually, those chapters are still excellent writing, in and of themselves. The story line is held up, the subject is interesting, and yet it just loses that grip for me.
My dispute is that Peretti seems to have forgotten possibly the first and foremost essential, distinct, mandatory stipulation to writing a book that is going to be called either Horror OR Thriller…KEEP THE TENSION.
For any sort of book (scary fiction or not) to have any enthralling power over its audience, there must be some level of tension. There has to be an underlying pressure, anxiety, edginess, uncertainty, even just a case of the heebie-jeebies.
But there has to be something.
Again, please do not think I’m trying to mark Peretti as a bad writer. That’s not it at all. He’s even got a new book coming out that I’m interested in buying, Illusion. For Monster, however, even with it’s fantastic story line, it didn’t hold up to what I thought it could have been. Whether Peretti intended it to be Thriller, Horror, or just a really good story, in my opinion a bit more tension would have brought it to another level.
All in all, read it not for the scare, but for the story.
Peretti? OK. But I am much more to suggest my second most favorite book ever. He's the real deal with no hype and imagination that can lead one anywhere. Try John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. It's available in a one volume paperback. I can supply details if necessary. It's absolute genius both for now and especially from the time he lived in. Even for people with an Armenian Theology, I would suggest it as an education in Apologetics. Let me know.
ReplyDeleteI've only read Monster so far, so this post isn't a judge on his writing skills, just the writing in this book. I do plan to read more. John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion...I'll have to look it up!
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