Do you search for Nessie in Scotland, Champ in New York or do you want to go to Africa to search for Mokele-mbembe, the choice is yours?  I myself, started with the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland and then, came back to the beginning again and started other searches for the other creatures because I needed to know how they all would end.  I also took alternative side options with each of them for that’s what’s so wonderful with these books, the possibilities are endless.   

There are actual photographs in these books and a few of them, you will find familiar as they are popular with that creature.  There is the blurry image of the Loch Ness Monster with its head poking up out of the water (or is that really a twisted tree branch in the water).  Nevertheless, the photographs help reassure the reader that these creatures are real and that you’re on a mission to prove it.  I enjoyed all the different directions this book takes you down and following these paths, they were never hard.  The font size was large and easy-to-read which was good and it varied in size according to different tasks.  I did feel that the book was lacking in drama department.  The book does a great job in providing specific details and setting up the scenes but each of the actual events, they fell short for me.  They were over before I knew it and it was time to move on.   Where was the drama?  The anticipation?  I felt cheated.  I was tracking down a famous, mysterious creature and I thought there needed to be more: more story and more excitement.

Make sure you check out the back of the book for a list of freshwater Lake Monsters Around the World.  There are 7 monsters listed from Loch Ness in Scotland to Champ in the U.S. to Ogopogo in Canada to The Lake Van Monster in Turkey.  There is also a glossary at the back, a few internet sites & books pertaining to the Loch Ness Monster, and a few questions relating to information in this book.  I liked that this book also includes an index. I think this book provides some good basic information about the monsters presented inside it.   

Sample Text

“Going inside the cave would be a terrible risk.  You could get trapped or lost. No. You’ll stay where you are and hope the shape returns.  You wait and watch as long as you can.  But nothing appears.  After a while, you have to resurface before running out of air.

In the boat, you swap out your oxygen tanks and head back down.  But it’s hopeless.  You don’t see another hint of Nessie.  As the sun drops low in the sky, you realize it’s time to head back.

This search has been a failure.  But you’re not going to give up.  Maybe tomorrow you’ll have better luck.

THE END

To read another adventure, turn to page 9

To learn more about lake monsters, turn to page 103”

by Hunter Shea

The first chapter seemed to keep switching between present and past tense. Twins witness their parents killed by presumably the Loch Ness monster while on holiday. We jump ahead to the twins grown up and settle into mostly present tense.

Natalie is obsessed with hunting down the monster that killed her parents, with the obvious difficulty that most people don't believe Nessie exists. Eventually her brother joins in the hunt after not seeing each other for several years. They've grown up and have much to discover about each other.

The narrative lacks realism. There's no plan for hunting the creature that isn't suicidal and guaranteed to cause some close calls.

I've enjoyed Shea stories before, but on this one I feel he sort of dropped the ball. For one thing I regard whole novels written in present tense trend as the stuff of very young Romance writers who didn't pay attention in English class. There were a few glaring typos or wrong form of words and the plot was overly predictable and lacking suspense.

I did get a laugh from a particularly good one-liner and to be fair, there were some dramatic scenes towards the end but again, they were a little too difficult to suspend disbelief. Definitely not Shea's best work.

I had a little trip planned for today, which was just about the only thing that has kept me from finishing Circe before the official start of Halloween Bingo. And no worries, I am too tired to finish it before midnight.

Anyway, one of my goals for today was to find a book about the Loch Ness Monster that  would fit the Cryptozoologist square of Halloween Bingo and I hoped that there might be some inspiration at the Loch Ness visitor centre. 

Alas, no such luck. The only books about Nessie were kids books. The only other fiction books were ... from the Outlander series. :( (I'm so not a fan...)

It also means that the only Loch Ness fiction that looks easily available seems to be Steve Alten's book, and I just cannot bring myself to read that.  

So, I have decided to change direction and read Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes instead.

I was enjoying this book until the plot decided to completely jump the proverbial shark and include a twist of WTF-ery.

I get that this was written in 1979 as a pulp horror book, but there is just never a good time to present me a with a plot that involves this:

And then we have this:

The intelligence looked hard at the soft white skin of the alien creature and stifled a surge of revulsion; how ugly, how ugly and alien. How weak and puny the body. How unlike the gracious stately calm of a Saurian mate. And yet the alien had the right chemical mix of life by which to perpetuate part of the Saurian being, a being that would be part of its siring and its immortality. Yes, the thing had to be done; for to have lived, to have suffered, to have loved, to have feared, to have cried, to have fought and to have had so much ambition … and then, simply, to pass down into the blackness, into forgetfulness, into oblivion as if it had never existed … how could such a thing be? The ego refused to accept the fate of its kind. The puny white-skinned alien offered hope, at least … What did it matter that other aliens had come before … other aliens, how many times before the intelligence no longer cared; they had been offered and had perished. All attempts to create a new generation of Saurian had failed. The intelligence dismissed that fact. It did not fit in with its hope. This time it would succeed … it would … it would … it would …

 

I read this during the weekend that Brett Kavanaugh was voted onto the SC bench. It was not a great time (not that there ever is one) to read about some dude's imaginings of interspecies rape.

I finished the book but this turn of events pretty much ruined the read for me.

This is gripping.

I have no idea what decade this is supposed to be set in but it is eerie and full of suspense. Quite Gothic, too.

@Arbie: You might have been right about the interspecies angle.