Books: We Are All Completely Fine By Daryl Gregory (2014)

 

"Harrison is the Monster Detective, a storybook hero. Now he’s in his mid-thirties and spends most of his time not sleeping. Stan became a minor celebrity after being partially eaten by cannibals. Barbara is haunted by the messages carved upon her bones. Greta may or may not be a mass-murdering arsonist. And for some reason, Martin never takes off his sunglasses. Unsurprisingly, no one believes their horrific tales until they are sought out by psychotherapist Dr. Jan Sayer. What happens when these likely-insane outcasts join a support group? Together they must discover which monsters they face are within and which are lurking in plain sight."

As I mentioned in my Harrison Squared review, I discovered while reading it, author Daryl Gregory had written We Are All Completely Fine novelette released a year before H2. Set some twenty years after the YA title, this short novel only hints at Harrison’s previous life as some sort of monster hunter. He recollects some stuff to the group in this tale –but some are bit different here than in Harrison Squared- and that his “adventures” inspired a series of YA horror novels called Jamison Squared.

This is a much more complicated story than H2, darker, more violent and gory. While it’s clear that Gregory will continue with at least two more adventures featuring the young Harrison, this novelette is either an open-ended epilogue or, once finished telling Harrison’s younger days, the beginning of something different.

I’m unsure if Gregory intended this to be a short story from the get go, a first attempt to see if a full length novel could support his idea –and maybe take on Stephen King is some subtle way, ala a interconnected universe- or Harrison Harrison’s voice took over his thoughts and so he needed to address that story first before moving on. I mean, there are a lot of good ideas here, some half-baked, some nicely fleshed out, but we’ll see if he intends to follow through.

Still, as I read Daryl Gregory, the more I love his work, his style, his attempt to blend horror and humor.