Book Review: Mother of Abominations: (A Monster Earth Novel) by Desmond Reddick

Mother of Abominations:  (A Monster Earth Novel) by Desmond Reddick

Paperback, 239 pages

Mechanoid Press, September 2017 

You are going to have to take this review with a little bit of caveat. Hundreds of episodes into his podcast Desmond Reddick has become a reliable voice in horror commentary. Hailing from the island off the west coast of Canada the man lives in one of my favorite places on earth. Dread Media has more than 500 episodes and our friendship goes back to my first interview on the show, Me!. That meant a lot to me because he was the only person to show up besides Robert the owner of the bookstore to my first and only book signing in Canada in 2007 when all I had was 6 story chapbook version of Screams from a Dying World.

So we go back. Des has been one of my first, most trusted readers. He was the first person to read a completed draft of The Last Night to Kill Nazis. He has sent me unpublished novels as well. So why did I wait this long to read his book. I have had it on the shelf for a while. As much as I trust Des two things held me back. 1)Kaiju is not my favorite sub-genre for fiction as I think the spectacle is what makes it work on film. 2)I knew the novel was a part of a larger universe Monster Earth, started by some other folks. I wasn’t sure I didn’t need to read the previous work and I was unclear if the story was finished.

While setting up for a zoom, Des mentioned that it stood alone fine, at that point I decided to save it for a trip, and yes I read this over two sittings, and flights and I am glad I did. This novel 200% stands on its own. I didn’t read the cover and knew nothing about the plot. If you want to stay even a minor spoiler free, here is your warning…

An English teacher, and a lifelong consumer of the genre my boy knows what he is doing. Set in an alternate history where Kaiju are used as cold war weapons. This novel is as much an occult-cold war spy novel as it is about giant monsters. It gives you a little giant monster action early and then it gets into the proper story. Featuring radical Bree Kenny who is in the process of blowing up the English parliament, after her arrest she is given a mission. I love this Snake Plissken/ Dirty Dozen type reluctant hero set-up, and an absolutely right choice for the narrative of this novel.

The first moment when I realized the writing was first class was a scene when Bree’s brother Bran is in jail suffering solitary confinement. That kinda isolation creates hyper-awareness. Caught perfectly. “Somewhere down the hall, water dripped constantly. Bran began to count the drops when he first heard them days ago. He got somewhere in the three-hundreds before giving up.”

Bree has to go undercover on a mission to infiltrate a cult that is run by a young  Alister Crowley. This provides the novel with a very interesting throughline of the old dark magician, who thinks Bree is key to raising an ancient monster from hiding.  “Friends! Allow me to introduce you to the woman who makes all possible. Babylon, the mother of Abominations.”

I know I like in reviews to look for mission statements, but the mission is a fun story in this world. But Reddick knows you are here for monsters and one of the best moments of the novel is Faulkner one of the British military’s monster guys expresses his love for the monsters. “She was beautiful while she slept. However, she was never more beautiful than when she was in midst of battle. All of her field time up to that point had been used against the armies of men. Very soon she would face her first peer.”


Mother of Abominations is a fun novel, there is nothing insanely groundbreaking here but that was not the point. Desmond Reddick didn’t need to break ground here; he needed to make a solid entry in a novel that combines cold war and Kaiju elements. He did it

This is also a first novel, and it shows very little of the common growing pains. I have read the novel that Reddick wrote after this. It is a noir superhero piece called “...And Kid Ghost.”  That novel does break ground. Reddick says he wants to give it another polish before trying to publish it, and I hope he does because that novel blew me away. Nonetheless, Mother of Abominations is a great solid novel and worth reading.  Super stoked for my friend on this one, and I want you to be able to read the next one.