Note: This review will contain spoilers for the first book, Ordinary Monsters. 

‘Do you believe in monsters?’ she asked softly.

He stood with a quick reply on his lips but then he saw her fingers and froze.

‘You should’, she said in a sweet voice.

And ran her bony fingers slowly down his cheek, staring into his face as she did so.

When it comes to a sequel it is the sign of a good author to be able to draw their readers back into a story effortlessly, to be able to remind them of key events from the previous instalment without making it feel repetitive or like info-dumping. Miro doesn’t fall into either of those pitfalls as he continually reminds us of past events in an authentic and immersive way. Given the large cast of characters and the complex plot, this couldn’t have been an easy task but as our characters set out on their separate journeys they convey their role in the fall of Cairndale and what has led them to their current task. It felt as if no time had passed and I was once again caught up with these children, their strange powers and their quest to save the youngest of them all, Marlowe.

Cairndale, once built to be a home to Talent children, a sanctuary, a place for them to have an education and hone their talents, has burnt to the ground. The children and their caretakers have fled to Sicily, to take refuge and prepare for what is to come next. But Marlowe is lost beyond this world and young Charlie, Komako, Ribs and their protector, Alice won’t stop until they can find a way to bring him back. A fabled second orsine, a gateway, may hold the key, if only they can find it. Yet when a body washes up with corrupted dust writhing over its flesh, they all realise another force is at play and the drughr, monstrous and deadly, are hunting their every move. What becomes a race to save their friend turns into uncovering an ancient prophecy which could end Talentkind entirely. 

Bringer of Dust by JM Miro is a perfect spine-tinglingly haunting sequel to read on those dark chilly nights. Expect more monsters, more children with extraordinary abilities and more twists to keep you hooked at every turn. 

Miro has a fantastic way of bringing each of his settings to life, whether that be the gas-lit foggy streets of 18th Century London or the scenic railroads and villages of Spain or the stony, ancient villa in Agrigento, Sicily. I love how vividly the late 1800’s are described with such clarity, we see the harshness of the world back then and the brutality. As in all Dickensian literature it is always the children, the weakest and most innocent of all, who suffer the most. In Bringer of Dust we see the underground filled with starving desperate children, we see them turn to thieves and murderers, turn into bitter angry shells because that is how the world has shaped them to be.

“An under-London, is how its denizens thought of it. City of the exiles, of all those who’d been sent away from Cairndale, or who’d lived outside its walls and lost their talents all the same, a seedy under-city located at the end of crooked alleys, down shabby courts, off wooden steps two leaps above the Thames where only dead men went, behind damp cellar walls and beneath crumbling tunnels.”

The adults in this novel fall into two categories, those who wish to protect these children and those who wish to use them. Miro introduces two new characters, the underlord Craker Jack and the even more dangerous, Abbess. The cruelty these two inflict knows no bounds, they both rule a network to keep abreast of the dealings of talents and wish to rule with an iron fist, if that means plucking children from the streets and turning them into assassins and spies, so be it. This is shown clearly through two additional new characters, Micah and Jeta who were manipulated by both these adults. Micah was once a talent with great strength but as what often happens to Talentkind, his abilities disappeared and he was left Talentless. Yet this didn’t stop Micah from surviving as he used his frustrations to become a vicious little killer. Jeta on the other hand is a powerful Bone Witch, I loved exploring her abilities as macabre as they were, and though she may appear just as viscous as Micah, there’s much more to her than that. Jeta became one of my favourite characters to follow, she’s a child with so much depth and so much hurt. 

Found family is a major theme throughout, the Talents are shown as outcasts, exiles and orphans, it is in their otherness that they bond together, for good or for ill. Once again I was endeared by the close friendship Charlie, Komako, Ribs, Oskar and Marlowe share. I always have a soft spot for following a group of close friends, ones who would do anything for each other, face any evil, die for each other. That’s exactly what we get here as these children travel the world to uncover the history of Talentkind and seek clues as to how to save Marlowe—they fight a myriad of monsters and risk their lives to protect each other from harm. Miro doesn’t for one second hold back on the horrors his characters face. There are drughrs, antlered and many-limbed, there are ancient glyphics who appear mud-formed, and then there is The First Talent. The children’s fear permeates throughout the book, not just fear of the monsters themselves, but fear of failure, of letting each other down. 

After the revelations of the last few chapters of Bringer of Dust and the enticing epilogue, I am beyond looking forward to the last book in this trilogy. Having said that, knowing how brutal Miro can be to his characters, I’m also fearful of the conclusion.

“Sometimes it was like living wasn’t anything more than just surviving. And surviving? That was just a matter of how much you could stand to lose, before you weren’t you any more.”

ARC provided by Abigail at Bloomsbury Publishing in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the copy!

Both Ordinary Monsters and Bringer of Dust are available now! You can order your copy on Bookshop.org