Little Monsters |
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Description: Jarred Collins is not a real person. It is a fact he has known all his life, though he has never understood why. He has no memories of his early childhood before the age of ten, and no connection to his family beyond his mother, who has always warned him to stay away from his other relatives. His only clues to his true identity lie in a past that he's grown increasingly unable to confront, and in his vivid dreams of an ancient conflict that feel frighteningly real. Jarred has kept himself hidden from normal people all his life, but an anonymous e-mail message leads him to an Internet chat room. He allows himself to be talked into a public meeting with one of his online friends, and seemingly by coincidence, he meets a homeless girl whose oddly familiar appearance causes Jarred to experience a sudden flashback of his worst memories as a sexual predator. With only a few words, she confirms Jarred's suspicions when she tells him, “you aren't real.” The worst shock of all comes when Cora reveals that she is Jarred's daughter. Now Jarred must sort out how to explain his past to a nine-year-old daughter he's never known. That would be hard enough, but Jarred has also just learned that his "Internet girlfriend" isn't 18; she's 13, the victim of long term abuse, and after months of swapping stories with Jarred, she's ready to try for a real relationship with him. None of these encounters are as random as they seem, and someone is manipulating Jarred to draw him back toward his family. As the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, Jarred prepares himself for a confrontation with his father. Returning to his hometown, Jarred begins to sort out the mystery of who he was as a child, while at the same time learning that he has a greater importance to his family than he ever could have suspected. Something inside Jarred is waking up. With every passing day, it grows stronger, eating away at his false personality and reshaping him from the monster he has always known himself to be into something far more inhuman and powerful. The transformation is killing Jarred, and what emerges may be too dangerous for anyone to control. |
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Extended information: Little Monsters is book one in the Collins family trilogy, which are classified under the niche genre of tragic fantasy. (Yes, I am making this shit up as I go along. It's part of the job description, you see.) Part of the Mystical World Wars series, the events in this story take place in mostly in 1994 (the prologue is set in '93) and focus on the last year in the life of Jarred Collins. Jarred was originally introduced in the story The Way the World Works, and sadly, his life never got better. Now living in Austin, Jarred is a hollow recluse hiding away from normal people until he meets Cora Collins. Cora soon reveals that she isn't just keenly intelligent. She's telepathic, and Jarred should be too. He isn't because someone has erased his mind, taking all of his memories before the age of ten and his powers as well. Though the main plot is about Jarred's search for identity, this story also follows the lives of all the members in this dysfunctional family. The story is complex and sometimes disturbing, but it is also sentimental, and oftentimes humorous. The cast of characters are not heroes, anti-heroes, nor even villains. They are simply people trying to make sense of a world that has no time to deal with the walking wounded. Their actions are frequently amoral, and many readers will have a hard time finishing this story due to the troubling decisions made by the characters. Readers will also find the Collins family trilogy to be vastly different in tone and pacing from the shorter stories also set in the MWW world. For this reason, the trilogy is to be considered "advanced" reading material, and it is highly recommended that readers try out other titles in the MWW series before attempting to dig into Little Monsters and its sequels. |
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