Beth Bonini's Reviews > The Monstrous Child

"Oh, enough local colour. I'm boring myself. Frankly, if you've seen one sulphurous pit, hideous precipice and poisonous, hissing, foaming river you've seen them all."

Francesca Simon is best known for her Horrid Henry stories, beloved by children who delight in naughty narrators and anti-sweetness. This foray into the younger side of YA (12-14) has a contemporary smart-ass tone, despite the setting and characters which are taken from Norse mythology. The protagonist is young Hel - a fourteen year old-ish girl who is the offspring of the god Loki and the giantess/seer Angrboda (distress-bringer). Born with the head and torso of a girl, but the legs of a corpse, Hel is not exactly beloved by the gods - or even her parents. Eventually she is exiled to the underworld: Hell, get it? Destined or doomed to rule, depending on your point-of-view. Hel would definitely say doomed, although she takes whatever perks she can get.

The dominant feature of the book is Hel's voice, which can be amusing in a very dark way. I have known some 12 year olds who would probably enjoy this style of humour. Unfortunately, there is just not enough plot to the book, and the voice, which dwells rather repetitively on Hel's various miseries, gets rather tiresome, too. The obvious comparison to this book would be Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, which brought the Greek legends to life within a contemporary setting. This book has the various mythic references, but there is not much of anything - including, sadly, Hel - to make the reader invest in the story. It's a fast read, though, with short chapters and an overlarge font. I wouldn't recommend it to many readers myself, but it's been a big hit with the various awards committees this year - and appears on the UK YA 2017 shortlist, the 2017 CILIP Carnegie Medal list and the Costa Book Awards shortlist.