A review by rkking
Monster Blood by R.L. Stine

3.0

 

I recently got a bit of the nostalgia bug when thinking back to the Goosebumps books I read as a kid. Goosebumps, and by extension the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark series, definitely introduced me to the genre of horror. After Goosebumps I moved onto classics like Dracula and Jekyll/Hyde, then on to the gown up stuff throughout my life and to this day. Well, this nostalgia bug got me wanting to re-collect the original 62 run of Goosebumps books, and in their first run printings because of the amazing covers. Perhaps the best part of the series was the covers. Next up;
#3, Monster Blood
The titular monster blood in this story doesn't quite fill the role of a monster, not like Slappy in Night Of The Living Dummy does, for example. It acts as more of a McGuffin, an object that the story revolves around, more like in Let's Get Invisible, or Say Cheese And Die. The plot acts in more of an almost whimsical nature, what with the kids playing with the monster blood like it's a toy. Or when the dog eats it and grows. The real threat doesn't reveal itself until the last couple chapters of the story, but it comes across as unnecessarily convoluted, like Stine had three different ideas and chose to mash them all together instead of using a single clear choice. It's one of the first Goosebumps books ever written, so that's understandable, as the clear decision making becomes stronger as the books go on.
I remember there being actual monster blood 'goo' toys you could buy, and the monster blood itself is one of the more iconic parts of the Goosebumps series.
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