The Nowak Brothers
Mikkel and Szandor kill monsters.
So what if they’re making it up as they’re going along? How much do you need to know to bash in a zombie’s head with a lead pipe or slice a ghoul with an internet-bought katana?
They may in fact have no clue what they’re doing.
But if you need someone to go down into the sewers to clear out some monsters, figure out why everyone in your … some monsters, figure out why everyone in your neighborhood is getting bitten, or if you swear you really saw a zombie and you don’t know who to call, then call them. They’ll show up in their van of makeshift weapons, gear, and cleaning supplies to investigate your problem. They may be twenty-somethings with their own issues, but when it comes to monsters they know what they’re doing.
They probably have no clue what they’re doing.
That has never stopped them before.
Hired by a woman from the rich side of town who believes she’s being stalked by monsters, the two brothers think they’ve finally gotten an easy job that will pay well. But as they follow the clues, nothing adds up. Kidnappings, jackbooted commandos, and mysterious emails are just the beginning. Soon they find themselves involved in something bigger than monsters. It’s anybody’s guess whether they’ll come through it alive, much less get paid.
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Preamble
After I finished Liggio’s Dane Monday Saves Christmas (With Help) during the break, I started up I Kill Monsters, the debut shot across the bow in the Nowak Brothers series. I felt drawn to Szandor Nowak as his misanthropic self did some wacky shit with Dane Monday in the Christmas story, perhaps feeling a kindred spirit in the dude (a former angry young man, perhaps?) I’m glad I did, for reasons cited below.
A note about my reviews: I consider myself an appreciator, not a critic. I know first-hand what goes into the creation of art – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the risk. I also know that art appreciation is subjective and lernt good what mama tell’t me – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I’m not a school marm grading a spelling test – I’m a reader who enjoys reading. If a book is entertaining, well-written, and I get absorbed into it, five out of five. I have gone as low as three stars – anything less than that and I will not review a book (chances are I DNFed anyway). Regardless, I wouldn’t even put a star rating system on my reviews but for the reality of storefronts like Amazon.
Take from that what you will.
Review – 5/5
I Kill Monsters is a first-person adventure story narrated by Szandor Nowak, a misanthropic young man barely out of teenage jeans (probably ripped up in OG punk rock style, too). Not even legal for boozing, as you loony Yanks like to play pretend with 21, but he drinks whiskey nonetheless. He indeed does, as the title suggest, kill monsters. He also whinges, whines, and goes out of control with rage as he drops the lead pipe on zombie and ghoul ass. To say that the guy is a sour motherfucker is a bit of an understatement, as evidenced by the following line near the end of the book:
“My sole act of defiance was drawing a penis on the white board.”
As a recovering penis drawing aficionado (hell, I ain’t recovered from shit – now I write about dicks) in the (blue) vein of Jonah Hill in Superbad, I could appreciate Szandor’s stance on drawing wieners on stuff. Though in his case it was on a white board in the villains’ lair, rather than in school textbooks that were to be handed down to my sister to leaf through in horror the following year as her teacher looked on (true story). But what this is meant to convey is the somewhat patent unlikability of Szandor Nowak.
Liggio takes pains to explain why Szandor is a bit of a zombie slaughtering DB, but the fact remains that he is that annoying fuck who takes everything way too fucking seriously and has a hard time chilling the eff out. Of course, like all anti-heroes, Szandor has a traumatic past that explains why he’s got such a chip on his shoulder. Said past illustrates why his brother Mikkel is in the monster hunting game with him, though like most older fantasy brothers, he’s way cooler and gets more ladies.
Picture Resident Evil inseminating Charlie Brown and then the offspring (who listens to the band The Offspring) fucking The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and the child of that union failing to pull out when it hit that Pixar movie Onward raw, and you’re in the territory of what this book feels like. Onward vibes are strong with this one, even though it was written before the movie – Mikkel, in addition to having much more emotional intelligence than Szandor, even drives around a van like the older brother in that movie.
The plot itself centers around a monster job gone wrong because the dame (or is it the toots?) who stepped into the Nowak Brothers’ smoky office wasn’t being totally straight with the boys when she gave ‘em the job, see? Rather than Chandler-esque grizzled detectives slugging back whiskey, the broad gets two young men with a thirst for monster killing as her cigarette-eating gumshoes. The detective bits, replete with double-crosses and twists and what not, take a back seat to the very well-described action sequences throughout the story.
In fact, I have read Liggio described as ‘the Jean Claude Van Damme of literature.’ I cannot think of anything more apt, and before I add some kind of piece to my graphic ‘it’s x meets x’ literary descriptor trope above (it would totally be Van Damme as Uranus getting his pecker cut off by Charlie Brown Cronus and Resident Evil being born from the frothy waves in lieu of Aphrodite), let me just say that if you like action movies, you will love this book. John McClane from Die Hard probably needs a role in the creation myth of I Kill Monsters, perhaps literally mother fucking as he screams ‘yippee kay yay’…
Anywho, back from that little deep dive into my own psychology that would probably give Freud a boner for fulfilling many of his theories about everything being about sex, there is indeed some sex in the book. And some love interests. And misanthrope Szandor handles it all like a champ and deals with his demons and settles down into a white picket fence life by the end of the novel… kidding! He’s fucked and remains so, setting the scene for Jabberwock Jack, the second book in the series, which I will be reading soon.
As a final (non-sexual – aww, shucks!) note, this is one of the easiest reads I have enjoyed in a while. The prose is extremely taut and descriptive and the pacing is very well done. Technically, it’s sound AF. And it has a beating heart as well, even though it’s a severely traumatized one with ventricular scarring from PTSD-related panic attacks. It’s somehow not depressing, too, even though it deals with some depressing stuff. Somehow the lights gets in. A highly recommended book.
This was a fun read about two brothers who kill monsters. These guys aren’t pros, and don’t have the latest, greatest equipment, which makes their exploits hilarious. This is one of those books that ramps up and gets better as it goes along, and I’m looking forward the the next book in the series!
Good monster book!
I Kill Monsters by Dennis Liggio is a great monster hunting action book! Lots of cool creepy monsters, corporate espionage, lots of twist and turns, and great characters. Never bored.