“He knew the truth. Yes, my dear child, he would undoubtedly tell a terrified toddler tremulously seeking succor, monsters are real. I happen to have one hanging in my basement.”

― Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist

“The Monstrumologist” series by Rick Yancey consists of four books: “The Monstrumologist,” “The Curse of the Wendigo,” “The Isle of Blood” and “The Final Descent.”

The story opens to a young journalist who is hired by a nursing home director who had just had a strange patient die. This man, who goes by Will Henry, claimed to be to be 131 years old before he died. No family ever visited him. No one ever sent letters. He generally kept to himself but would sometimes tell bits and pieces of stories about a life long ago. When he died, the nursing home director gave the journalist a bundle of folios that were found in Will Henry’s room.

The folios consisted of groups of stories that seemed to be a sort of diary of Will Henry’s from his younger days. The journalist decided to publish the stories, hoping that someone may claim to be a relative of Will Henry’s.

So each of the four books begin and end with a chapter about the journalist. However, that is very little of it. The rest of the book is the gruesome and wild story about a young apprentice named Will Henry. He is the assistant to a Doctor Pellinore Warthrop, a Natural Philosopher of Aberrant Biology: Monstrumology, the study of monsters and monster hunting.