Monstrosity

Rating:
Summary: A Genetic Experiment Gone Wrong
Review: The characters are sketches. There is no suspense whatsoever. This thing reads unintentionally like juvenile fiction. It was gorey enough. It was a very fast read. Let's face it. Lee can be entertaining. But his novels are so simple that I sometimes fear he's either insulting us, or is just kind of dumb. I like Lee. But he's not a good writer. Monstrosity is a lame book.

Rating:
Summary: Horror or porn?
Review: The line is very thin in this book. It is a very short read. For those of us actually in the Air Force, the references to Security Forces are hard to get past being that the author researched nothing into the USAF at all. None of the facts about the Air Force or SF are accurate. That being said, we are on to the story.
Like I said, it may be horror, it may be porn. Hard to tell. The author has a particular afinity for rape scenes.
All in all, it is a very dumb and unsatisfying book. It seemed a good effort for a teenage author in need of release for violent and sexual frustrations, but for a thinking audience, this is hardly worth the time to glance over the back cover.

Rating:
Summary: Whatever Gets You Through the Night
Review: The premise for Edward Lee's book Monstrosity is filled with promise. Lee begins his book with an archeological dig of a Ponoye Indian site. What is found within the dig is gruesome and bids the reader wonder what happened all those years ago. Also, could such a thing happen again?

Lee then switches to the story's main character, and the reader is introduced to Clare Prentiss, a homeless woman totally down on her luck. Clare used to have a promising military career, but she was setup within the machinations of a sex scandal. Enter a man who simply introduces himself as Dellin with a lucrative job offer...a totally too-good-to-be-true job offer.

Meanwhile, people are mysteriously dying in macabre fashion. For example, "Caleb stared right back at her--Caleb's severed head, that is. The head had been dropped in the area of leafy space between Kari Ann's spread legs."

Lee weaves a tapestry between the mystery of the archeological dig and the present day murders. Clare Prentiss finds herself mired in a gruesome mystery heavy with sexual overtones.

Unfortunately, the conclusion of Monstrosity seems quite contrived and fails to meet its original premise of greatness. Instead, the book seems to run out of steam and takes on an assembly line approach to literary creation. The book's outcome is predictable and disappointing. Monstrosity is an okay read, but there are far better horror and suspense books available for a discerning reader.

Rating:
Summary: This book rocks
Review: The whole book was hardcore entertainment from start to finish. So much stuff was going on.

Rating:
Summary: Truly a Monstrosity
Review: This bok was jsut plain BAD. Graphic violence and gore are acceptabel IF the story's good, and it furthers the story. However, the gore and violence in Lee's book does neither. THe plot is threadbare and contrived, and the surprise ending seems to be tacked on - an "oh, by the way, here's how this all fits together" - There are also gaping logic "holes" in the story, and macguffins that leave the reader frustrated. I'm willing to suspend disbelief in horror, but not at the expense of how a rational person would or could be expected to react.

Lee's writing style is quick and easy to read, and pacing is good - the talent's there, just not the creativity and ability to "scare".

Rating:
Summary: Good summer read.
Review: This is a good, quick summer read. The author leans too much toward the gore end when the plot gets weak, but tries to keep things moving along.

Rating:
Summary: Is the author twelve years old or something?
Review: This is one of those books that I wanted to like based on the hype surrounding it and the author. I regret that I was sorely disapointed. The novel has plenty of poorly written sex and rape scenes that are punctuated by gore that fails to ever be frightening or even establish the slightest bit of suspense. Even the blurb on the inside cover is dull and unconvincing.

In the end Ed Lee writes like a twelve year trying to gross out his friends. This would be ok if only characterization and the art of story telling don't get in the way.

Sorry Charley

Rating:
Summary: Absurd cheese gets sillier the more you read
Review: Though it gets off to a fairly promising start, Edward Lee's Monstrosity ends up a preposterous load of hooey that becomes more unbelievable and ridiculous as it goes along. The protagonist is Clare Prentiss, a former Air Force officer who has not only suffered the indignity of violent rape (at the hands of her own colonel's deformed son, no less!), but to add insult to injury, has been drummed out of the service with a dishonorable discharge after a rigged hearing.

Clare is rescued from a life of homelessness by dashing young Dellin Daniels, a former serviceman himself. He offers her a plum, high-paying job as security chief at a remote Florida lab where he claims a cure for a particularly deadly form of cancer has been found.

The whole situation seems too good to be true, and naturally, it is. What exactly is Dellin not telling Clare about her employer? And why does everyone on site (including Clare) seem to have a libido that's going haywire? Of course, as a reader, you will have even more questions. For instance, why would a top secret research lab full to the brim with highly potent drugs be built within a stone's throw of what we're informed is the most densely concentrated population of crystal-meth addicts in the solar system? And why hasn't any of the horribly malformed and growth-mutated creepy-crawlies populating the surrounding swamps managed to find its way out of the immediate vicinity and into the nearby town, which is apparently a five-minute drive away? But these are just some of the many silly plot contrivances at work in Monstrosity.

Lee doesn't scare you; he just throws gore at you. Granted, often it can be entertaining to read, but "gross" has nothing to do with "frightening" or "suspenseful".

Convenient plot devices abound; e.g., Clare finds a missing videotape right at the point the story needs her to. And a character is given the personality quirk of having ridiculously excessive genital piercings...for no reason other than that they can contribute to his amusingly ghastly death. Lee telegraphs all the plot's surprises well in advance, and even an intriguing framing story involving an archaeological dig ends up marching merrily to the beat of cliché.

Apart from Clare, none of the characters is very interesting. For monster food, Lee peppers his story with a collection of loathsome dopehead white-trash stereotypes. And, despite the whole elaborate set-up of the secret lab and its experiments and everything, the story finally turns out to be a typical revenge yarn after all. The climax is just dumb from the ground up and dumb from the roof down on the other side. I defy you not to laugh; it's Mad Scientist drivel right out of Ed Wood!

Don't be fooled by the evocative, zombie-horror cover, gang. If this were a movie, it'd be Joe Bob Briggs material all the way. Which isn't to say it wouldn't have SOME entertainment value. But there's no way you could call it GOOD.

Rating:
Summary: Great basic horror story
Review: Well, I was cruising the aisles at [a local store]the other day, looking for a decent horror novel, and was in no mood to read any of the latest mediocre shlock by King or Koontz. I discovered this book; the premise intrigued me, as did the cover design, so I decided to take a chance. I am glad I did! Edward Lee is a highly gifted writer, and this book is a fun, chilling read. Previous reviewers have condensed the plot, so I will not repeat their efforts here. However, I will say that the various plot threads are wound skillfully together for a most satisfying conclusion at the end. Also, there are some elements of dark humor, very lightly tossed in, which give the story great local color. I dinged it one point because I thought that the sex and violence aspects were a tad too graphic, but this book is far from being "splatterpunk." As a great, fast-paced story for horror fans it can't be beat.