Reviews with content warning for Murder - Monstrilio

Monstrilio is a tale of grief, told in four parts. The story starts with the death of a little boy and follows the family as they grieve. The first part follows Magos, who cuts a piece of her dead son away and uses it to grow a new boy. The next part follows Len, the best friend of the couple, then Joseph, the father, and lastly Monstrilio himself.

Each of these characters is so unique, all dealing with their own issues outside of grief. Magos has a strained relationship with her mother, Lena suffers from severe insomnia and was abused by her own mother, Joseph has some pretty bad depression and Monstrilio, well he's just hungry. Like really hungry.

Honestly, everyone in this book needed therapy.

Currently I'm listening to Pet Sematary and this is kind of like, if Lewis could have brought Gage back but it all worked out.

Content Warnings

podanotherjessi's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I will be the first to admit that I absolutely did not understand this book, but I had a great time reading it anyway. That's really all I can say about it. The characters were so messy, but I loved them anyway. The grief rolled off the pages of this book, but so did the care and love and desperation. Amazingly well written and beautifully tragic.

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noshinbean's review against another edition

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dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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erks's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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thestartrekunicorndog's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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monstersinspace's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Maybe this book just wasn't for me. Like 95% of the time I had no idea what was going on. I feel like it was all over the place and the end kinda just meandered around and with no discernable plot.

Spoiler: I thought it would have been about grief but then it went to this weird sex cannibalism route that I still don't understand. The first part was about grief, but after they cut of M's stump there was a whole lot of nothing, a time skip of like 7 years, and then M being even more of a horrible monster creature thing and everyone making excuses for him.

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smuds2's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

For a first novel, it is quite good - I'd happily read any another novels written by Córdova.

The pacing is quite good - I think it pauses where it needs to pause and speeds where it needs to speed. I think I would have liked it to sit a bit more with Joseph - it felt like his chapter was stuck mostly with narrative and rapid character development to a climax.

There were some unnecessary sexual explicit scenes for my taste (I'm not quite sure the fact that they were sexually explicit added anything valuable to the importance of the scenes). I also think that at times, the first three chapters lapsed into kind of a generic voice.

I think that, thematically, this is a great work of weird-fiction? Magical realism? depicting the grieving process. Lucia, not really understanding monstrilio, but begrudgingly living with it (I'm thinking especially post attack). Lena just being supportive to both her friend(s) and the manifestation of their grief. Magos arc of basically saying "I can fix it", while it 'dragged' on her life (although, not for the worse - I'm thinking of her turning down the Valencia gig to stay with family could easily be interpreted as a reprioritization directly as a result of the strengthened bonds formed during grief).

I don't think Josephs arc is nearly as clean - and maybe that's the point?

And I'm not quite sure how to square away uncle luke in this setting - is he the enabler? Is that good? The safe place to act your worse during grief?

I also think that a major shortcoming of the book was not sitting with lucia's death and then just kind of ignoring jackie. is that because they were not supportive? And as a result faded out of their life? I feel like there could have been thematic commentary for how to grief for a "normal" death.

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