Monster Blood is the first book in the original Goosebumps series I had almost no remembrance of before this reread. I, of course, remembered that monster blood is a green, play doh-like substance that grows and eats things....but that was basically it. 

 

I now know why I couldn't remember much else of it. This book is a complete bore. 

 

Seriously, it took me two days to read this sucker-- I can usually finish a Goosebumps in an hour or two if it's, ya know, more fun than watching paint dry. Unfortunately, Monster Blood fails on even this level. 

 

The plot is as follows: whiny Evan has to stay with his creepy aunt. He meets a neighborhood girl named Andy. Evan whines about his aunt, her house, her cat, the neighborhood. The two go to a "creepy" toy store that fails at being creepy. They buy monster blood....and things get out of control. As it turns out, Evan's aunt's cat is a witch and she (his aunt) has been her prisoner for years. The cat has possessed the monster blood, making it grow and hungry for flesh.

 

My summary of the book is ten times more interesting than the book itself. Shame, RL Stine. Shame.

 

I gave this book two stars because of Andy, who is simply one of the most delightful protagonists in all of the Goosebumps canon. She's not afraid to make fun of Evan (one of the most annoying characters I've ever come across in a book) at every turn. She's basically the voice for the annoyed reader, i.e. me. You go girl. 

 

Simply put, I don't see why this book is one of the most popular in this series. I don't see how it spawned THREE sequels, all of which I remember being just as bad as the original. Fortunately, I won't have to deal with Monster Blood II for fifteen more books. Thank God for small favors. 

 

Up next: Smile! It's Say Cheese and Die! 

Maaaaan, this book is boring. Every Goosebumps book has a good deal of cheese in it, but this one is just so.... Blah. It's not cheesy in the fun way like most of the other books in this series-- it's just sort of crappy. I remember being bored by it as a kid and I'm even more bored now. How it spawned three sequels in the original series I have no clue. 

This is the first Goosebumps book I remember nothing about, aside from a creepy toy store being a part of things? I dunno. 

 

I remember not liking this one as a kid, though. We'll see.... 

I'm a bit on the fence about this one. On the one side, there's great world-building, with appendixes and maps and monsters and wicked-cool occupations with some amazing thought put into it. On the other side, there's about the blandest characters I've ever seen. Potential is definitely there but it's not quite showing its colours yet. Europe is probably my favorite character, simply because she's kinda a badass, but even she needed more. And backstory, oh my gosh!

So it was actually a bit of a chore to get through. I didn't really care one way or another about Rossamünd and it was slow-moving to boot. But I had to finish it and once I settled in, it started moving along a little quicker. Or at least it seemed that way.

Here's to hoping the characters live up to their amazing world in the rest of the series!

It's a world something like ours but not and the author is determined to fill it with words, some old some new but overall I came away feeling like the author was trying to hard and having too much fun with words, and the words were driving out the plot. Rossamund Bookchild is now Europe's Factotum and his secret is about to become public knowledge. He's trying to find a place in the world for himself but he has problems finding where he belongs, he's a gentle person who doesn't like conflict but he's finding that conflict is being thrust upon him and he's also finding that while he's strong and able to fight, he doesn't like it. It falls victim to what I call the Coffee flavoured Coffee issue; why come up with a tonne of new words that you explain are the equivalent of a regular earth word in the "explicarium", including Caffene for Coffee. My surprise was that he called Rabbits Rabbits and not Smeerps. The story could have fit into a smaller space and I would have been less distracted by the words. Yes the words are interesting and the world Cornish has created is interesting but I came away feeling vaguely dissatisfied. Maybe they should read more of O S Card's advice on writing and less of Urusula K Le Guin.