This was a very different retelling of the Greek myth of the Minotaur. Set around a very Dickensian London it tells of Nell a little girl who finds the body of a strange man in the mud but the body is not dead and as Nell nurses him back to health a strong bond is formed between them. The villainous Murdstone attempts to exploit Minos for his own ends and the story follows Nell and Minos as they follow their dreams.
Beautifully written, the characters leap out of the pages and I really felt that I knew these characters and was totally invested in their stories.

-Summary-
Once a Monster is a reimagining of the Minotaur myth, set in Victorian London. Our protagonist is Nell, an orphaned girl forced to scrounge out a living by seeking ‘treasures’ on the mudbanks of the river Thames while dreaming of becoming a dancer. One day, she comes across a man, Minos, half-drowned in the river - and from that point onwards their lives are irrevocably intertwined as they battle unforgiving London to discover who they truly are.

-Mythic Context-
The story of the Minotaur, the Cretan Labyrinth constructed to contain him, and the hero Theseus sent to defeat him, is one of the most well-known of the Greek myths - I think it was the first one I ever heard. It’s the first one I remember, anyway!

In Once a Monster, Dinsdale explores an interesting premise: what if Theseus only thought he killed the Minotaur - and what if the Minotaur escaped, and survived, for centuries? The Minotaur of Greek myth is transported to an almost equally legendary Victorian London filled with Dickensian characters and settings - as well as tantalising references to other Greek myths scattered throughout.

-Review-
Dinsdale has a truly beautiful writing style: it’s fairly heavy on the description which I know isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I think it fits perfectly with the Dickensian setting (London and the Thames are almost other characters in their own right!).

The writing is strongest when describing London and its many characters: Dinsdale transported me to cold, wet Victorian London and the muddy banks of the Thames, the squalid and cramped living conditions of Nell and her fellow ‘mudlarks’, and the contrasting opulence of the theatre Nell dreams of dancing in.

It’s a shame that the writing falls flatter in Minos’s flashbacks. I’d have loved more vivid descriptions of the characters and settings of ancient Greece - lots of opportunities to contrast between Greece and London were sadly missed.

Nell, our protagonist, is a romantic and sentimental character, naive despite the many hardships she’s suffered. She’s a dreamer, unlike the more practical and pragmatic mudlarks she spends her days and nights with, which adds a dreamy, fairytale-like quality to the novel. As a fellow dreamer, I love her optimism, the way she hasn’t allowed herself to become jaded by her mother’s death and the terrible situations that followed, the way she always believes the best of people even when faced with evidence of their cruelty.

Nell is fiercely protective of Minos from the moment she discovers him in the river. The complexity of Minos’s character, his almost split personality, and his very existence itself, is at the very heart of the story and makes for a very powerful and intriguing mystery, especially in the first part of the book. Who is Minos? Where did he come from? Can he possibly be The Minotaur? And when some of these questions are answered, the first still remains: who is he? Who does he want to be?

The mythological background is woven into the story mainly through Minos’s flashbacks: he offers us tantalising glimpses of characters like Theseus, Pasiphae, and Circe. I wish we could have had more of these!

Our main antagonist is Murdstone, a brilliant Fagin-esque villain. If Minos is morally grey, Murdstone is morally charcoal: he’s awful to the children in his care, he’s awful to his peers, he’s awful to himself. He constantly tries to justify the worst aspects of his behaviour to himself (and to us). He’s got a very compelling back story: a tale of rags to riches and back to rags again. He’s always striving to do whatever he can to get back to the top again, and is altogether a well-rounded and intriguing antagonist.

The primary theme of the story is that of humanity vs monstrousness. Throughout the novel we are given hints that Minos becomes more ‘human’ in appearance when he acts selflessly, and more ‘monstrous’ when he submits to the rage and violence that constantly simmer beneath the surface: his horns grow back; he grows taller, broader, and hairier; he begins to lose his speech and his ability to communicate - a very Ovidian transformation! I would have preferred a more nuanced del Toro-esque take - where the monster doesn’t have to change themselves to have humanity - but I think it works in this more magical-realism context.

Minos’s battle for his humanity versus his monstrosity is reflected in Murdstone. Murdstone not only goads Minos into his more monstrous behaviour but finds himself changing, too. He grows older, weaker, and more ill the more relentlessly he pursues his obsession with regaining his fortune and status - until the end, where his corpse, bloated and disfigured by the Thames, washes up almost unrecognisable by his mudlarks.

We’re given what feels almost like a bonus chapter, an epilogue of sorts, where we learn that Minos ends up surviving his trials in the labyrinthine sewers to follow Nell and her descendants around the world - I think it’s a shame that he still seems to lack independence, and still can’t find happiness for himself, on his own terms. He has fully shed the ‘monster’ aspect of his personality - along with his immortality - but it all feels a little too neat for me. I think a story so concerned with the infinite twisting turns of a labyrinth, with the constant battle between humanity and inhumanity, could have benefitted from a more open and ambiguous ending.

Summary:
Once A Monster is a historical fiction with magical realism running through it. It follows ten year old Nell, a mudlark, who discovers a monstrous-looking man barely alive on the riverbed. Kind-hearted Nell tries to nurse the man, Minos, back to health but unfortunately, her cruel master, Benjamin Murdstone, has other, more profitable, plans for him.
As the friendship grows between Minos and Nell, Minos’s past begins to haunt him and he’s left wondering who he is, a man or a monster. In order to protect Nell from his beastly side and grant her the life of dance she’s always wished for, Minos makes a deal with Murdstone. However, uncovering the past is more dangerous than any of them had realised.

Thoughts:
On paper, Once A Monster should have been my cup of tea since it was historical fiction mixed with some fantasy elements linked to the Greek myth of the minotaur. At the start, I was drawn in to Nell’s plight and the mystery around Minos, however, as the story progressed I found my attention waning.
I think perhaps the pacing was a little off. Up to about the halfway mark, the tension was building and I was eagerly reading then suddenly, it began to drag. There were some scenes in the middle that really seemed to slow down the pace and seemed stretched out unnecessarily. I, unfortunately, found I had to force myself to finish the book and this then affected my enjoyment of it.

The other issue, for me, I believe was the voice. For most of the book, we see through Nell’s perspective and because she is only ten years old, it can come across as childish but this is not a children’s book. I found it a little hard to believe that Nell would cling so tightly to one instance from her early childhood with the ballet troupe and that this is what goes on to fuel her dreams to join them. In reality, she has very little knowledge of the dancing world and how hard it can be. This in itself made her come across as a little naïve, as did how quickly she placed her trust and became attached to Minos. This is not a girl who has been sheltered from the harsher aspects of life, so her naivety was a little jarring with her background and again, made her seem childish.
I did enjoy Bantam’s perspective and thought he might come into play to discuss the deeper questions around morality and nature versus nurture. However, I didn’t feel he was given enough space in the novel to do so and our time with him was fleeting.
Minos, in my view, doesn’t come across as a fully fleshed out character and still seems very much the confused creature he was at the beginning of his life. I will admit it was also hard to sympathise with Minos when you come to understand just how many people he’s brutally killed in his long lifetime.
Our time with Murdstone, however, does paint a picture beyond the vicious villain archetype. At his heart, Murdstone is a very desperate man trying to reclaim his past glory and lives in fear of his quickly approaching death. It doesn’t justify his cruelty but it does go some way to explaining it.
I think perhaps I was yearning for a more adult voice to tell this story but overall, I was only given snatches of more mature perspective.

I think author did a great job of setting the scene of 1800s London and of the hard lives of the mudlarks. Dinsdale did well building up the entrancing world of dance at the Alhambra Circus, whilst hinting at some of the harsh realities of being a dancer. The weaker parts for me were the flashback scenes into Minos’ past lives. During these scenes, I never truly felt drawn in and this may be the reason I found it hard, as well as all the people he killed, to connect with Minos as a character.

A theme to this novel I feel is very much ‘good versus evil’ and when it comes to the human characters I feel for the most part this is done well. However, when it comes to Minos, who should be the focus of this, I found it lacking. By the end of the story, it seems Minos starts to shed the monster not through his own will but because of Nell – is it really redemption if it’s done on the behalf of someone else?
Additionally, and probably a more personal take, I find it hard to believe that someone who has killed others, in such a gruesome fashion, can ever be redeemed, no matter how much time has passed. Plus his guilt seemed more focused on the fact he gave into his monstrous ways rather than those he hurt in doing so. Lastly, I’d argue that becoming a man isn’t necessarily a sign of overcoming the evil within but that’s just my own view.

The ending, for me, didn’t gel well with the rest of the story and it seemed like the writing style switched just so the author could do a quick sum up of the rest of Nell’s and Minos’ lives. We lost Nell’s voice almost completely at the end, despite her being a prominent character throughout the rest of the book. Minos took over and I’m not sure, for reasons previously mentioned, that worked for me. Also, from the tone of the rest of the book the ending came across, for lack of a better word, a little twee and leaned heavily into 'telling' rather than 'showing'. I think I would have preferred it if the story had been kept open at the end and we had been left to our own wonderings as to the fates of Nell and Minos.

Whilst there were aspects of Once A Monster that I enjoyed, they weren’t strong enough to keep me gripped throughout the story. The world and historical setting is well developed and I would say the historical fiction side of this novel is its strongest. It does start out fairly strong but unfortunately, come the latter half, I didn’t feel it was as engaging. The main issues for me were voice and pacing, as well as difficultly in connecting with Minos. These aspects I will admit may come down to personal tastes and as such I would recommend reading multiple reviews of before deciding whether to pick this up for yourself. Overall, I would give it 2.5 out of 5, an average score (rounded up to 3 for NetGalley/Goodreads as I really don't think it deserves a 2).

When I read the description of Once A Monster, I was intrigued. I thought that it would be quite interesting to read a novel that took the myth of the minotaur and repurposed it in 1800s London. However, I just couldn’t get into this book.

I was able to get 55% of the way through this novel, but it just never gripped me. I felt that in the first half of this book, the writing dragged and not much actually happened. If this book was shorter, it would make for an enjoyable read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is a very interesting concept in the one the author combine Greek mythology and historical fiction, placing the famous Minotaur in Dickensian London. I like the work of the author but for me this book was difficult to read (that doesn’t means the book is bad at all)the author style always remind me the Grimm brothers style and I always tell this author write fairytales for adults. His writing stile is beautiful and normally the plots are well created. My only trouble with this book is that in some parts it seems overwritten and was a difficult to me to keep up with the plot. Thank you very much to NetGalley to the access of this ARC

What a glorious combination of Greek myth meets Charles Dickens with a bit of Brothers Grimm mixed in too. I loved this book. Robert Dinsdale is a favourite author of mine. His books are like fairytales for grown ups and this did not disappoint. His stories transport me to other worlds, times and countries. Here a beast of a man, almost dead, is discovered in the Thames by a young mudlark . Instead of stealing from his body she cares for him and helps nurse him through his darkest hours. Nell, the young mudlark has distant memories of her mother, long since passed who entrusted her to the employment of Mr Murdstone and who left her a pair of ballet shoes.. An unbreakable bond is made between the two which will be tested to its utmost as the two try to make their way through a cruel and harsh world . Who is the mysterious Minos? Will Nell ever be able to rise above scavenging in the mud and waters of the river. This is head and shoulders my best read of 2023 and is my favourite book so far by this author. My thanks to Netgalley and PanMacMillan for allowing me access to this advance digital copy.

This was a beautifully told Greek mythological story woven into Victorian England, and in many, many ways it worked, and in others it didn't have quite the magic that The Toymakers had.

This was a bit of a slog in places, and I found myself putting it down and picking up other books instead because while I was intrigued and captivated, it was also hard work in places. I am happy that I read it, and it's the type of book I would definitely recommend to those who love a good Greek mythology retelling (of which there are plenty of great contenders out there at the moment, and might be part of the problem).

The characters were maybe not three dimensional enough, those who were bad were thoroughly bad, those who were innocent made naive choices that made it difficult to really believe in the story. But the vivid descriptions peppered through, including of the smells of London, were magnificent. I could picture parts of this book so clearly. There were also questions that were left answered, but not in the mysterious kind of, and it's up to the audience to decide, more in the, we forgot about answering them so we didn't.

This is a good book, I am happy to have read it, but I think I had just started it expecting more.

Once A Monster seems to be a bit of a Marmite book. I loved it. It made a refreshing change to have a story based on Greek myth that was not a feminist re-telling. Instead what we have is the story of Minos brought into the 19th century (a little Dockensian but none the worse for that).

One morning Nell, a mudlark bound to Benjamin Murdstone, finds the body of a man but the body turns out to still be alive. Nell nurses Minos back to health and a bond forms between the unlikely pair. Quick to take advantage of any oddity coming from the river Murdstone works out a way of exploiting this friendship, particularly after he gets sight of the strange tattoo carved into Minos's back - a tattoo which looks like something he's seen in a book of Greek myth.

The book follows Nell's desire to become the dancer her late mother told her she could be and Minos's need to find out who he really is.

The characters of Nell and Minos are beautifully drawn and Robert Dinsdale has managed to imbue Murdstone and some of his cronies with thoroughly distasteful characteristics.

This is a tale of good v evil. Greek myth dragged through the ages in the body of a man/monster.

I enjoyed this book from start to finish. The narrative never lagged, the pace and tone were perfect. It was a joy to read. It made me angry, happy and even tearful at times (I can be a bit of a romantic). Loved it.

Highly recommended for fans of Greek myth, Dickensian style stories or just people, like me, who enjoy a thoroughly well told story.

The first half of the novel really pulled me in. The characters were interesting and I got invested immediately. I made it through probably the first quarter of the novel in one sitting and only stopped because I really, really needed to go to bed. In fact, I had to ban myself from reading it at bedtime after that.

Once Minos and Nell started meeting frequently, however, the narrative began to lag until it seemed to essentially be going nowhere. I was still interested in the characters, and still wanted to see where they would go, but I was also a bit bored of reading through a decent chunk of pretty mundane conversations.

I also didn't entirely understand the strong connections between the principle characters. To be honest, that Minos was so wrapped up in a ten-year-old girl was more creepy than endearing and that a savvy street kid - particularly a girl - wouldn't be immediately suspicious of his motives was a little unbelievable.

There were a few sections I didn't quite see the point of. Minos and Murdstone attempting to resurrect the past with the two doctors, the background with Sophia's husband - even the overlapping memory of Sophia and Nell's mother.

Overall, the characters were enjoyable, if the plot seemed forced and artificial. This book - and the characters - needed to be given more clarity and purpose to really pull off a retelling like this. The story of the Minotaur offered a rich lore to draw from - and combined with the back alleys of Victorian London there were many, many unrealized possibilities. I really wanted to love this book, particularly after such a strong beginning, but ultimately ended up feel unsatisfied and disappointed.

An interesting and unique concept blending Greek mythology and historical fiction, placing the famous Minotaur in Dickensian London. Unfortunately relied very heavily on tropes and was overwritten, making it a slog to get through. Not one for me.

This historical fantasy novel was an adventure that mixed magic and myth. The diversity stood out and it was incredibly well written. The slow pace was a real drawback and dampened the mood itself.

Unfortunately this one wasn't for me. Although thr Victoria setting was well described and atmospheric, I found the pacing to be incredibly slow and I ended up not wanting to pick this up. I also thought the mixture of Myth and historical to be oddly jarring, and not in a good way.

3.5*

This was my first foray into Dinsdale's work, though I'd heard great things about The Toymakers. Once a Monster was a good introduction into Dinsdale's work, and I really connected with Nell and the world of the Mudlarks.

Though I felt the pacing could be better, the story was slow in parts, it was an imaginative retelling of a very familiar story that wove Minos' life between London and Knossos.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants a twist on Greek mythology.

Not the retelling of the Greek myth that I expected, but enjoyable nevertheless as a reimagined version of the Minotaur’s story through a Victorian era lens. As a motherless child, Nell, a little mudlark, conveys the love and compassion of the mother from whom the Minotaur was taken and incarcerated and in return he subjects himself to being manipulated by her ‘caretaker’ so that she is able to fulfil her dreams. A little contrived in places to maintain the story’s flow, but an enjoyable read. Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC to review.

Sadly, a curiously leaden outing from the author of the wonderful The Toymakers

This mash-up of two genres which I thoroughly enjoy, unfortunately stayed just that, a mash-up, and rather contrived, for me. Dickensian London meets Greek myth, with neither properly taking off, subject to far too many coincidences and clever nods to both genres, which didn’t really either enlighten, or amuse. The central character is a little foundling, daughter of a dead theatrical seamstress who sewed for ballet companies, is called Nell. And in case no one gets the allusion she is even addressed as Little Nell.

Taken in by a somewhat Fagin type character with a nest of children who are mudlarks, scavenging potential money making detritus from the river, Nell improbably rescues Minos, giant not-quite-a-man, somehow trapped in a mental labyrinth, with dreams of a savage past, who works dealing with London’s sewage .

There are far too many coincidences of people finding and re-finding each other, and a plot which seems to trudge along slowly.

I kept on going, rather grimly, as I thought that The Toymaker’s author – a book which had grabbed me from the off – must surely soon capture this reader fish on his previously skilful hook. Unfortunately this was not to be, the various Greek myth and Dickensian nods failed to delight or add depth. I finally gave up just over a third of the way through.

What a beautiful and unusual book. Dinsdale mixes mythology with life on the streets in Victorian London. Minos, a man with a past who can only come to terms with who he really is when he’s with Nell a mud lark is gradually transformed.

I was disappointed in this book. I have several other books by this author that i absolutely love but for me personally it was a let down in comparison.

I loved the idea of mixing Dickensian with Greek mythology and was excited to see how this author was going to pull it off however, i found the book to be very slow and the characters unengaging. It was a push to get though the book. Still love the author and previous books, this one was just not for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I loved the premise of this book. I’m a huge fan of Greek mythology retellings and I was very open to a more sympathetic depiction of the Minotaur.

This story definitely has a very Dickensian feeling. The descriptions of London are detailed and evocative. I loved the scenes of the mudlarks searching for treasure on the banks of the Thames.

However, I found the pace of the novel very slow. It didn’t really hold my attention and I was having to push myself to keep reading. As others have said the pace does pick up later in the book with an exciting ending which is worth holding out for.

A really inventive retelling but not as fast paced as I would have liked!

"Once a Monster" by Robert Dinsdale is perhaps the most enjoyable Greek Myth reimagining that I've read. Part Oliver Twist, part Frankenstein, Dinsdale manages to bring the myth of the Minotaur to life in Victorian London. This book restores faith in humanity and demonstrates that if you show a little bit of kindness then you can tame the beast. Might even have a little tear in my eye.

Dickens meets Greek myth - a very creative retelling of the Minotaur myth where the Minotaur escapes and over the centuries becomes more of a man, less of a monster. The setting was well wrought as were the characters, particularly the children and their master who are straight out of Dickens, and even though at times I found myself wondering whether the story could get more over the top I didn't want to put it down, so credit to the author there!