A Cosmology of Monsters is a confessional account of the hunting and haunting of the Turner family. A tale steeped in atmospheric, crawling foreboding; it is a story that takes the best elements of Lovecraft but removes the racisim and sexism that imbued his tales and adds characterisation and a generational sprawl that is spellbinding. It's a dark horrific fairy tale, centered around Noah Turner, the latest in a line of family members who has insight into a world that plays on the periphery of our own and occasionally bleeds into it. A world of monsters.
It's an expertly wrought tale that ratchets up the tension and fear alongside the inescapable curiosity and empathy for the characters caught up in the Turner maelstrom. One of my favourite horror books that I've ever read.

A clever, labyrinthine, haunted house of a book. Told by various characters we follow the lives of a family seemingly stalked by monsters, although everyone carefully avoids any mention of them. If you love a chilling tale with a heart, this is the book for you. When Noah hears a scratching at his window in the dead of night he is too afraid to leave his bed. His angry mother fights constantly with his oldest sister, but Eunice as middle child is ever the peacemaker. His father died weeks after Noah’s birth. Noah feels his absence, and the silence that surrounds their lives before Noah’s birth is oppressive. Finally, driven by poverty, Margaret (Noah’s mother) grudgingly agrees to open a haunted house - and it is a huge success, saving them from life in the soulless apartment. What follows is the slow disintegration of a family already torn apart by grief, with the added mystery surrounding Noah’s monster, and missing children. I need to stop there to avoid spoilers, but this is the sort of book you race to finish then mourn when you have. Outstanding..

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Titan Books for providing me with the digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill is a tender horror novel that revolves around a family and the monsters that haunt them.
This book hooked me to its pages form the very beginning and it offered me a terrifying story about the importance of family and love.
It deals also with important topics such as depression and suicide. And it does so in a good and effective way.
This is Hamill's debut novel, but it doesn't sound like a one. His writing style is gripping and he did a very good job at balancing the real parts with the horror and fictional ones.

You know what it's like when you are start a book and have no idea where it will take you? A Cosmology of Monsters was like that for me. Intrigued by the description and the gorgeous cover I thought I would give it a go. Why not read something mildly creepy during lockdown? I love Halloween as much as the next guy plus it's a good chance for me to break away from WWII, my default lockdown genre. Win - win.

Oh! What a book. This novel held me transfixed by the other-worldliness of its gently menacing text. Reading it was just like walking through a house of horrors. You are perpetually on edge, looking out for scary creatures tucked in dark corners. The balance between anxiety and the potential for fear is in your throat. I was suspended in this feeling for the majority of the book. It was delicious having no clue what was around the corner. There was a moment when I applied the brakes because the twist was not creepy, as such, but unsettlingly inappropriate. But, moving beyond it and into the novel where it was explained made it a bit more palatable...a bit.

I am going nowhere near describing the plot. I shall just say that Noah won my heart. Both as a neglected 6 year old and throughout his teens and adulthood. An excellent character whose encounter with monsters was preordained as a brilliant idea for a novel. Loved it and the sense of escapism it instilled.

This book gave me everything I needed from a horror novel that I’ve been searching for ever since I hit my last five star horror novel. I love the genre, but I find myself doing more searching than I do finding in relation to good material, but this one is a solid ‘blows you out of the water and has fun while doing it’ book.

The story starts, as many do, with a love story. A bit of a weird one, but hey, who doesn’t have a marriage haunted just a touch by eldritch horrors? I think the most successful part of the opening part of the book is the fact that it mixes the abominable and terrible with the mundane and everyday. The scene with the children’s birthday party? Disturbing beyond belief, and Margaret’s desperate attempts to clean up the mess in the aftermath was so real it was marvellous.

But there’s so, so much more. Noah’s relationship with the monster was golden age Stephen King material, laden with menace and weird sexual undertones that give you more than a sense of the bizarre. The haunted house set up was the balance of camp and kitsch, and the ending of the novel was in that strange, in-betweeney world that would make any reader vastly uncomfortable.

To add onto everything else, there’s so much more here. A mystery, with murders to be solved, social commentary on queer identity, religion, and sexual abuse, characters who you genuinely have a stake in and actually LIKE (hallelujah), and a horror creep that leaves you feeling completely off-put and uncomfortable. As a horror novel and a family epic, it gives you everything you could ever need. I could not have put this book down if I tried- which, in itself, is rather Lovecraftian.

A Cosmology of Monsters is a smart, haunting novel about loss, grief and family. I wouldn’t say it was a ‘horror’ novel, though it definitely contains traits of the genre. It’s incredibly creepy at times, using the inherent fear we all have for those shapes we sometimes see our of the corner of our eye, or the unusual sounds we hear in bed at night. The amount of depth and emotional heft to the story was a pleasant surprise, as the book creates a fantastic cast of characters and an intricate, unsettling multi-generational narrative which reaches a satisfying conclusion. I’d definitely recommend for fans of horror, or crossover fans who might enjoy a hint of fear alongside their family narratives.

"A Cosmology of Monsters" will probably appeal to most fans of mainstream horror. I really enjoyed it as well: The plot is very intriguing and the story's "monster" is a good balance between scary and tender. The book moves away from the traditional haunted house and I adored the homages to Lovecraft.

Unfortunately the story didn't fully live up to its potential for me. I very much liked the author's strong, imaginative ideas, the character development, however, was a bit weak. Still, A Cosmology of Monsters is an engaging read that I'd recommend to fans of Stephen King, et al.

A Cosmology of Monsters was, in short, weird as hell, and I really, really enjoyed it! I’ve been wanting to read this one for ages, so BIG THANK YOU to @netgalley for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

ACOM reflects on the life and loves of the Turner family, through the eye(s) of their youngest son Noah. Interspersed with strange, dream-like visions of an unearthly city, he details the history of a family plagued with misfortune, mental illness, and a mysterious, glowing eyed monster, and the ends to which he will go to ensure their happiness (monster included).

It’s an ode to H.P. Lovecraft and the weird fiction that the Turner family (and clearly, the author) love, but with a (SPOILER) happy(ish) ending and a somewhat more transparency than a lot of weird fiction affords. While there’s still a suitable level of mystery, Hamill gives enough of an explanation as to the functions and motives of the monsters and cosmic horrors at play to avoid leaving the reader frustrated, while still providing the trippy as hell moments of horror that we all (or at least, that I) love.
I fell in love with the Turner family, especially Eunice, whose arc is so utterly heartbreaking that I was on the verge of tears at times. Hamill details mental illness in so many different aspects of the book, but Eunice’s descent in depression struck an almost-physically-painful chord with me. Noah, I will say, is D*CK, but I did really enjoy his bizarre, genre-subverting romance.
(SPOILER ALERT: The Monster deserved better.)

There’s a haunted house, there’s family drama, and there’s a big scary monster. What more could you want?

A Cosmology of Monsters is described as a literary horror novel,, which isn't a bad description. The plotting is strong, especially for a first novel, but I found the writing style barren and unemotional. I got used to it by the end, but it did feel like I was ready a newspaper account rather than a literary novel.

The book keeps a sense of dread throughout, people keep disappearing, the tension is ratcheted up well. I was hoping for a big ending, which didn't work for me. I was expecting explanations, conclusions, but I found the lack of clarity in the ending unsatisfactory.

Still, a solid 4 stars, and an author to look out for. I'm sure the quote from Stephen King on the cover will ensure this books finds its way into many homes.

Book supplied by Netgalley for an honest review.

A cosmology of Monsters is a deeply gripping & eerie tale about monsters and family. I found it hard to put down and read well into the early hours. I think this will be a huge hit with Stephen King fans

When I got wind of Shaun Hamill’s, ‘A Cosmology of Monsters’, I said it looked, “so far up my street, I might already be living there.” Well, I’ve walked through his haunted house and out again, and while I genuinely loved the experience, I’m glad I don’t really live there, because it’s really fucking scary.

This is a brilliant novel, weird and languid and utterly in love with its subjects. This love is tangible, in the form of narrator Noah, whose coming-of-age story begins many years before he is born, and explores his haunted and damaged family, bedevilled by monsters and struggling to cling to each other in their mounting madness. It’s also a book about loving horror; about the impacts—positive and negative—of the likes of Lovecraft, and Bradbury, and the B-movie staples that inform our ideas of modern horror.

Noah begins with the meeting of his parents, Harry and Margaret, and then maps the difficult flowering of his family, first his sisters and then himself, through the years, relishing the telling. His father is a working class collector of books and comics, a fan of the lurid scares of Lovecraft. His mother is cut from the country club set but, having fallen on hard times, she’s working through college in a bookshop and hoping for the advantageous marriage her mother is coaching to towards. Their match is uncanny, in every meaning of the word. They marry, have children, struggle to make ends meet. They are also perpetually in the shadow of unseen evils, monsters that are peculiarly their own. In response, the Turners build a haunted house business, The Wandering Dark, in which they all play a part. To go further would put a pin to the plot, but the extraordinary heart of this book is its affection for these people and it’s faithfulness to telling the whole of their story, so while genre fans might show up for the cosmic threat and the fleshy fantasies, they’ll stay glued for the reality of the Turners.

It’s a slow book, definitely, and lengthy, and there are frequent, nightmarish derailments of the narration which make it a book you need to work for, but it’s so worth it. It’s reminiscent of Joe Hill’s NOS4A2 in its love of vista and scope, and if I loved that book for honouring the whole of one character’s lifetime, I fell completely for this one for giving the same terrifying attention to everyone here.

I can’t recommend this enough, it’s thrilling, engrossing and unnerving. Brilliant.

This book was interesting at the beginning but lost its way quite quickly.

I enjoyed the beginning as the horror was very well used, his mother sees bugs coming out of peoples eyes and mouths and keeps seeing creepy monsters in the corners but none of this is ever explained or has anything to do with the overall story.

The second half of the story just dragged and had barely any horror in it so it was quite boring int he end.

I was more interested in the story about his parents at the beginning than i was about his life and how he ended up in the 'city'.

I think this would have been a great horror book if it had followed the original story in the beginning and had gone even further into the Lovecraft simiarlities.

This is one of those books where it’s hard to really summarise the events. A lot happens in A Cosmology of Monsters, a novel that spans decades, focused on a single family. It starts with Noah Turner’s parents, Margaret and Harry, who bond over a shared love of books. But as their relationship grows, something dark lurks at the corners. They have two daughters, Sydney and Eunice, but Harry starts to change. He becomes obsessed with the creation of a haunted house, and the family creates The Wandering Dark, ensuring Harry’s legacy before his untimely death.

When Noah is a child, his mother and sisters resurrect the haunted house, though they shield him from the imagined monsters contained inside, and the real ones circling their family. But one night, Noah finds he can no longer resist the knocking at his window, and the monster waiting for him isn’t as scary as he imagined. Instead, it becomes his friend, setting him on a course that will affect the rest of his life, and his family.

It’s a lot. It’s a long book, almost 450 pages on Kindle, a book that can slot into a variety of different subgenres. It’s got Lovecraftian elements, combined with a family saga and coming-of-age tale. We see this family grow, we see and feel their pain and heartbreak and rare moments of joy, all through the eyes of Noah.

Hamill does a fantastic job with the point of view. Even the story of Harry and Margaret retains the viewpoint of their youngest child, looking back on the family and with his own ideas slipping in here and there.

It’s hard not to feel for Noah. On a personal level, I could identify with his position in the family, the baby with two older siblings (in his case, two sisters, in mine, two brothers), trying to forge his own place in an already established dynamic, with a distant mother and siblings who increasingly have more to think about than their little brother. Noah adores his sisters, especially Eunice, and he feels it deeply when she pulls away from him. He’s left out of the planning for the haunted house revival, and becomes an afterthought, mostly left to his own devices. He’s also confronted with situations he doesn’t understand and doesn’t know how to cope with, and he’s a very real, vivid character who comes through really well throughout the novel.

Threaded throughout the story are a variety of themes, but the most persistent is mental health and trauma. Harry’s death – and his strange actions and attitudes proceeding it – is the catalyst for the whole family. Margaret struggles to fulfil her role as mother. Sydney battles against her mother, deeply affected by her father’s death, and Eunice deals with depression throughout her life, deepened by the fact she can never truly be herself. Like Noah, each character feels fully fleshed out, each dealing with their own internal battles while the external presses in on the family.

This is a thoroughly engaging novel, and though it’s long, it rarely felt like it. It covers a lot, and gives a fantastic picture of a family haunted through two generations. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for anything else Hamill releases in the future, and strongly recommend A Cosmology of Monsters, especially for those who want something with just a slight touch of Stephen King.

This is the author’s debut. I thought it was great and look forward to reading his next book. This is not the horror novel I was expecting. The focus is more on a highly dysfunctional family and their own personal monsters with a hint of the supernatural. It’s dark, disturbing, taboo, weird but well written and completely engaged me. The characters are among the best I’ve ever read in fiction, sort of mangled and seriously messed up, but completely empathic all the same. The story is told in a linear fashion which I usually don’t like but works really well here. The linear events are broken up with script extracts which made no sense to me for ages. This touches on a lot of dark subject matter that can be hard to swallow at times such as depression, suicide, rape, child abuse and neglect to name but some. This is not a light or easy read by any means. This really struck a chord with me.

A lot of the buzz around this one talks about HP Lovecraft, and to be honest, I think that’s a little misleading. While it shares that sense of reality not being what we think, the horror here is as much intimate as it is cosmic, and the book is far better written and interested in character than anything that Providence misanthrope ever managed. It’s certainly rooted in classic American horror, with nods to King, haunted house rides and Anne Rice as well as old Howard Phillips, but it sits aside from that world. It’s a quiet, odd, melancholy, book, with something of the off kilter fairy tale quality of Jonathan Carroll. It’s not a brutal gorefest, and you could have an argument about if there’s even a villain, but in the end, it’s a book that got under my skin, and I think it’ll linger there.

I thought this was going to be an easy review to write, but so much of the story relies on the reader not knowing what’s coming. I’ve got a whole list of symbolism and elements [flashback to A-Level English Lit], and I can’t mention 99% of it because it would spoil the story.

A Cosmology of Monsters weaves the tale of the dysfunctional Turner family, and their loves, losses, secrets, and denials. From its fantastic opening line – “I started collecting my older sister Eunice’s suicide notes when I was seven years old.” – onwards, this dark fantasy unfurls into an exploration of loss and the many and varied ways in which we deal with it. The book is mainly narrated by the youngest member of the family, Noah, with a series of ‘Turner Sequence’ vignettes from the other characters. There are monsters, but they’re mostly the human kind.

Each part is named for a story by HP Lovecraft, and his tales are a theme throughout the book. However, you need not have any prior knowledge in order to enjoy this novel - the Lovecraftian element is down to the Gothic tone of the story rather than linking to any of his tales. If I were going to compare it to anything, it would be Stephen King’s and Peter Straub’s The Talisman.

A Cosmology of Monsters is a beautifully written debut novel, and everybody should go out and buy a copy.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Told largely from the perspective of Noah, with alternate POV's and formats scattered throughout, this was an absolute ride of a book. Half-horror, half-family drama, it manages to engross the reader with the writing style, the mysteries, and the atmospheric feel.

Monsters are real and imagined and hiding in plain sight.

Most of the characters were unlikable, the family drama and poverty brought some visceral cringe to the story, and some questionable relationships added constantly to the unsettled vibe of the whole tale.

I finished this book crying and I don't know why. What even was this story? Why do I care about these characters? Why did I love this book? A mystery in itself.

Thanks to Shaun Hamill, NetGalley, and Titan Books for the advance copy.
I believe it's already been released in the US but is due for UK release on the 29/06/20.

Would absolutely recommend to any fans of slow-burn horror, fraught family drama, or just weird fiction in general.

If you like a bit more to your horror this may well be the read for you. There are clear nods to other writers of horror fiction especially Lovecraft, in fact the plot sort of depends upon Lovecraft, but that's all I'm saying there. A Cosmology of Monsters looks at a family who appear to be like other families however there is a darkness that hangs over them. This is a horror novel that looks at family, love, the demons that drive us to harm ourselves and those around us.

The writing is very good, you get a slow build up to the horror that awaits the Turners, but I like that, it gives you time to build a relationship with the characters, so you get to know them. The plot works and I like the way it blends reality with the unrealness that permeates throughout the book. A great debut novel and I look forward to see where Shaun Hamill goes next.

A tale of the mysteriously disappeared, secrets and lies. I did really like this, it was a little like early Stephen King material but also completely it’s own thing. I really engaged and felt for all the characters, there was a strong feeling of sadness and melancholy throughout as the characters struggle to survive their stories. Monsters, mystery and horror....what more could you ask for.

This is quite a hard book to review and I can imagine it’s the type of book I’ll want to have on the shelves at work, but won’t be giving it the hard sell to customers. It’s such unusual, unsettling book and, for me, it was more heartbreaking than horrific. I was instantly invested in Margaret and Harry and, as such, sometimes the pain of their lives and their children’s lives was a little too much for me in my slightly fragile lockdown state of a mind. But the imagination and talent on display here is unquestionable, I look forward to his next book.