Uhhhhhhh... m'kaaayy then. Look. I know that these are supposed to be for kids. But they should also be good stories. And this one was just... not. It was the kind of book where, if it was aimed at adults, would never have seen the light of day. It was formulaic, all over the place, repetitive, oh-so-conveniently introduced characters, and the ending was so ridiculously out of left field that I sat there reading it with this expression on my face: Because... REALLY. REALLY. What the hell WAS that? I'll tell you what that was. That was a "Shit... My deadline for this book is in 3 hours, and I've written 94.3% of the book, and I have NO IDEA WHAT THE STORY IS. So... *slams forehead off of keyboard* ... Aaaaaaand done! Fuck it, they're kids. It's not like they know any better about plots or stories or good writing... or dogs." Dear R.L. Stine & Dean Koontz: Dogs are not people. Say it with me: Dogs... are... not... people.But let's talk about dogs for a minute here. This dog, Trigger, is supposed to be a 12 year old Cocker Spaniel. To clarify, that's 12 years old in people years, so he'd be a senior citizen in dog years - eligible for discount treats and early bird dinners, etc. We're supposed to assume that the dog and the kid (both 12) are life-long amigos, right? But I have problems with that theory. In order for certain things to happen in this illogical and poorly written excuse for a story, the dog has to meet certain criteria. Why? Because the author wasn't imaginative to NOT require it. Here are the things: He has to be disobedient and he has to be past the point of a possible growth spurt. What this results in (besides a massive eye-twitch for me) is a supposedly elderly dog who acts exactly like a puppy. 12 year old dogs just DO NOT jump around and yip all over the place and run laps around the owner who has only been gone twenty-fucking-minutes because they are just sooooooooo excited to see them again. They don't have the energy anymore. Dogs get arthritis, they have joint problems, they are OLD. The dog described in this book was NOT a twelve year old dog - Stine just didn't have any other techniques in his repertoire to make an old sleepy dog disobey and misbehave enough to make things plausible. (Though, I'd say he failed anyway.)So why did he need to misbehave? So he'd eat the monster blood. Because distracting the kids and having the dog eat it would not have worked, I guess. Instead, the kids have to know for sure that he ate it, because they stand there and watch the dog eat it (while pleading with him not to, which is absolutely going to work 100% of the time because dogs are absolutely human, remember!). Want to know why Trigger is "disobedient"? Because instead of treating him like a dog and training him, the idiotic characters in this book plead with him and ask him to do or not do things, or reason with him. Instead of "sit" and "stay" it's "just wait here 5 minutes, Trigger, while I run inside this shop and get an ice cream. I'll be quick, I promise. The line looks short." Yup. He totally gets it. Understood all of those words and what you meant by them because human. One last thing about the dog... So after he eats the monster blood and starts to grow, Evan takes him to the vet for a check-up. My only thought here is... SERIOUSLY? Not because I don't think that the dog should be checked out... but because of reality. Evan has $8 to his name. His mom gave him $10 before she left for a supposed 2-week trip (which could go longer, who knows?) and he then spent $2 on the monster blood. So he has $8 left. I recently took my cats in for a check up, and the exam bill, ALONE, was $50. EACH. Even accounting for inflation in the interim time between when Nintendo was the rage and now, I'm going to call bullshit on the fact that any vet would examine an otherwise healthy looking, non-emergency case, let alone run a gamut of tests looking for hormone abnormalities or other issues, for free (because I'm fairly sure that he still had his $8 post-vet as well.). And especially not without an adult present. How it would likely have gone down in Reality Town: "Call your mom, kid. Your dog looks fine. If there's really a problem, your mom can make an appointment to have him checked out." All that irritation and I have barely even addressed anything else in the book. The ending was just ridiculous. A total cop out so that nobody "real" in the story had to be bad or get hurt. Lame. So, so lame. Meh, I'm done. I don't think that reading these as an adult was such a great idea. I'm far too picky now.
This book is about Evan who has to stay with her Aunt Kathryn, where he makes a new friend. later, he chances upon an old toy shop where he spots a dusty tin of monster blood. Intrigued, he takes it home, oblivious to the dangerous consequences that would ruin his life...forever?Before anything else, this was my first book and I liked it, at that time. Not much, just a little, but enough to make me read another book which led to yet another and now I can't stop reading books. So, I want to thank R.L. Stine for making this series and having this great cover for it, because it is the cover that caught my eye in the first place. If I hadn't read this book, I'm not sure if I'd have ever gotten the great habit of reading books and so I wouldn't be the awesome person that I am currently. Can you imagine, not being who you are? You must be wondering why I gave it one star if I liked it this much. Well, you probably weren't wondering. But it doesn't matter. Anyway, I created this Goodreads account long after I read this book and now that I think about the story of this book, I think it was bad, horrible even. The story is boring, with every chapter seeming the same. Also, the characters are so flat that you wonder whether you are reading about blocks of wood who have human-like faces.On reading other Goosebumps books, I realize that R.L. Stine can spin much better tales. But his charactyers are always stereotyped, shallow and we-are-cool teenagers. Well, it doesn't really matter because most teenagers really are like this. True Story.
What do You think about Monster Blood (2004)?
Monster Blood sets out to be following the typical Goosebumps formula with two children who stumble upon some big bad that threatens them. The thing that it does differently is the way misdirection is applied: nothing is obvious in the way the potential threats are presented. In some cases, however, it is really exaggerated: the most glaring case is the toy shop owner's attitude when the children buy the Monster Blood at first and the fact that later on in the story he has mysteriously fled the town, for a reason that most probably has no relevance with the rest of the story. It is never explained.Indeed, lack of explanation is the other major problem this book has: while the twist ending is most interesting and surprised me, nothing of it is made clear. It just happens. The rushed ending is a typical trademark of the Goosebumps series.I was also rather disappointed in seeing the sidekick character having actually a lot of good ideas on how to deal with the Monster Blood, but the protagonist was constantly shutting her down with excuses that didn't make much sense.Ultimately the book left me the same familiar bitter taste as many others in the series: the flavour of waste potential.
—Rocket to Mars
It's funny, I remember not really being too crazy about Monster Blood when I was a kid, and reading it over again, I absolutely loathe it. The Goosebumps series started out very strong and promising with Welcome to Dead House and Stay Out of the Basement but this one was just plain stupid, I hate to say. Evan is forced to stay with his weird great aunt Kathryn while his parents are in Atlanta. He buys a can of Monster Blood at a dusty old toy store and the shit Monster Blood hits the fan from there.Every other scene in the book is Evan chasing his dog, Trigger. It is very repetitive. There is nothing creepy about this book, like in the previous two Goosebumps books. This one is just random and silly and the ending was like Are you fucking kidding me? The ending would probably be scary to a five year old. Probably. It didn't even make one iota of sense, and nothing was explained. It just was. And I guess that's how some children's books are; with things just being accepted without question but being an adult, you want to know the story behind it. Who was Sarabeth? How did she meet Kathryn? Why did she do what she did? What was the purpose of it all?For me, reading this book was like reading a book about say, farm animals. And the whole story takes place on a nice little farm and the animals are having a gay old time and then WHAM. The pig turns into an alien and it turns out his mom was a witch and his dad was a vampire and don't you know? That's how aliens are made! And the sky fell and everyone ate Thanksgiving dinner. Make sense? No? Exactly. (And no, Monster Blood had nothing to do with any of the above. I am just using them as examples.)Perhaps I am exaggerating or being a little too critical of a book written for second graders but after the first two in the series, I expected a lot more from R.L. Stine. I thought it'd take at least fifteen books before it got stupid.
—Alexandra
Oh R.L. Stine... oh you...Apparently Stine believes in massive time warps that happen within mere minutes. First, in Welcome to Dead House, the kids got home at 2am and about 20 minutes later the sun was rising... now in this book, Evan left right after lunch, a couple of things happened... he was gone maybe an hour at tops, and then he was going back to his aunt's house for dinner... geez, I thought time flew but in Goosebumps, hours are just skipped! The other thing I found a bit funny - Evan is going to visit Andy and finds her trying to untie a cat from a tree and she says "Come help me!" so then he goes over to her, gets the story, and says "Can I help?" and she goes "No, I've almost got it." Whoopsies... did we forget she originally asked for his help? Or did she just change her mind?And another thing (I just thought of)... Dear Mr. Stine... you know you can use other words for "scream/screamed." You could try phrases like "she yelled"/"he shouted"/"she bellowed"/"she shrieked"/"he wailed"/etc. I mean, I did all those without a thesaurus, so I'm sure there is more. But there are other ways to say "he/she screamed" without having to repeat that 20 times on a page. Just Saiyan.I mean, I know... it's R.L. Stine... it's Goosebumps... but I'm not going to pardon him for these amateur mistakes.Besides those issues, I actually didn't care much for this storyline. It wasn't my fave.Oh well, onto the next! ;-)
—*Miss Fame*
