Monsterland: A Journey Around The World's Dark Imagination

by Nicholas Jubber

Genres: Travel, History, Non-fiction
Pages: 353
Rating:

Synopsis:

Monsters, in all their terrifying glory, have preoccupied humans since we began telling stories. But where did these stories come from?

In Monsterland, award-winning author Nicholas Jubber goes on a journey to discover more about the monsters we’ve invented, lurking in the dark and the wild places of the earth — giants, dragons, ogres, zombies, ghosts, demons — all with one thing in common: their ability to terrify.

His far-ranging adventure takes him across the world. He sits on the thrones of giants in Cornwall, visits the shrine of a beheaded ogre near Kyoto, travels to an eighteenth-century Balkan vampire’s forest dwelling, and paddles among the shapeshifters of the Louisiana bayous. On his travels, he discovers that the stories of the people and places that birthed them are just as fascinating as the creatures themselves.

Artfully written, Monsterland is a fascinating interrogation into why we need these monsters and what they can tell us about ourselves — how they bind communities together as much as they cruelly cast away outsiders.

Nicholas Jubber’s Monsterland: A Journey Around the World’s Dark Imagination is half-travelogue, half folklore, where each chapter begins with a snippet of fiction about a monster — one version of potentially many stories about the monster in question — and then follows Jubber as he visits the locations, participates in local customs or speaks to local people about their stories, and generally tries to dig a bit into their origins and impacts.

This is kind of not my thing in some ways, since I wasn’t interested in the travel aspect, and sometimes the participation in the customs and rituals felt a bit he was gawking at the locals — I don’t doubt his genuine interest and intent to be respectful, but his shock/fascination over stuff like the guy hurting himself while worshipping Aicha Kandicha felt… well, kinda prurient, all the same. In that case, literally gawking at something someone held sacred, a transcendent moment for the person in question, and then sharing the shock and surprise of that moment with us, an audience entirely removed from that context.

I did enjoy dipping into a variety of different folkloric monsters, and the way the last section looked at modern monsters (Frankenstein, the robots in R.U.R., Godzilla) and their appeal as well. Jubber did well at evoking an atmosphere in certain places, and mostly stayed on the side of respectful about others’ beliefs while being profoundly sceptical himself. I was just more into the monsters than the travelogue aspect, so some parts didn’t click so well with me.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)