ORDINARY MONSTERS

Hidden talents

- David West

RELEASED OUT NOW!

672 pages | Hardback/ebook

Author JM Miro

Publisher Bloomsbury

JM Miro’s Ordinary Monsters, book one of new series The Talents, might just be the fantasy debut of the year – although technically it’s the pseudonymous work of established Canadian novelist and poet Steven Price, who’s taking his first plunge into genre fiction.

The tale begins with a runaway girl finding a glowing baby next to a body in a train boxcar, blossoming outwards from there to pull in a Scottish school for people with extraordinary talents, a portal between worlds, and a man shrouded in shadows who is hunting for a missing boy.

This continent- and dimension-hopping adventure pulls in a large cast, including Charlie Ovid, a black teenager convicted of killing a white man in Mississippi, who proves impossible to execute because he miraculously heals from any injury. He’s found by private detective Alice Quicke, who’s been hired to gather remarkable children for Henry Berghast, director of the Cairndale Institute, a home for those with special abilities. Quicke is in a race against former Cairndale employee Jacob Marber, who is now intent on destroying Berghast, to find Marlowe, the glowing boy.