Monsters is an illustrated collection of wild, weird, and whimsical
tales with a twist. These stories are not about mythical creatures;
here, the creatures speak for themselves. There's an orc who hates
Tolkien, a young demon awash in teenage angst, an angel abandoned by
Jesus who finds the Fates. Jensen creates a world both delicately
dreamlike and all too real, where the villain is sometimes the victim
and evil is not always what we thought.
If stories teach us how to be human, then the stories in Monsters are
the ones we need now. These are fractured fairy tales for grown-ups,
where the roots of sadism are laid bare and the horrors of human
supremacism are firmly faced. But as in all of Jensen's work, love is
both always possible and also a call to action. By turns macabre,
melancholy, and magical, these stories and their accompanying images
will leave you wondering who the real monsters are and how they can be
defeated.