AUGUST 2019 - AudioFile
Two teens caught between reality and delusion deal with the fallout from a traumatic childhood event in this moving audiobook. Ash, voiced by Brittany Pressley, lost her memory of the event when she fell from Solomon’s treehouse. Solomon, voiced by Zach Webber, has retreated into a fantasy world called Darkside, a city filled with magic, dinosaurs, and monsters. Pressley captures Ash’s personality with crisp consonants and clear emotions, while Webber’s voice is deep and minimally expressive—a stylistic choice that reflects Solomon’s mental state. As Solomon struggles to distinguish his hallucinations from reality and Ash tries to help her friend regain control, the two will uncover facts that draw their past into question. H.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
A stunning and intimate new novel about the effects of trauma on individual lives as well as the connections that allow people face their own incredibly difficult pasts… readers will be unable to forget both the pain and eventual freeing illumination Solomon and Ash find in the past.” — ALA Booklist (starred review)
“Art and storytelling are featured both as coping mechanisms and tools by which survivors find a voice and stand up for the truth… A combination of Andrew Smith, Laini Taylor, and John Corey Whaley that crosses genre borders and will win over readers.” — School Library Journal
“Equal parts fragile, fierce, and mind-blowing, Destroy All Monsters is powerful testament to friendship and the things we’ll do for the people we love. Read this book and you’ll be a Sam Miller fan for life.” — Kathleen Glasgow, New York Times best-selling author of Girl in Pieces and How to Make Friends With the Dark
“In DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, Sam Miller has achieved something truly great—a book that masterfully combines the restless, electric imagination of sci-fi/fantasy with the luminous, beating heart of a contemporary coming-of-age story.” — Jeff Zentner, Morris Award winning author of The Serpent King
“Laini Taylor meets John Green in this poignant young adult tale of parallel worlds and deep magic where trauma breaks but friendship heals. Miller offers no easy answers for fighting the all-too-real monsters in our lives but still allows space for hope, healing, and above all, bravery.” — Rebecca Roanhorse, Hugo & Nebula & Campbell Award-winning author of Trail of Lightning
“Sam J. Miller has cemented his status as one of the most visionary fiction writers of his generation. A staggering, stunning novel.” — Kass Morgan, New York Times bestselling author of The 100
“Destroy All Monsters haunts and delights. In this beautiful book are visions of what we might look like as victims, as villains, but, most importantly, as heroes. Sam J. Miller has done it again.” — Tochi Onyebuchi, award-winning author of Beasts Made of Night
“In Destroy All Monsters, Sam J. Miller bravely examines the wounds that trauma leaves behind, and continues to beautifully study the way love and connection of all kinds holds us all tight until it gets better.” — Christopher Barzak, award-winning author of Wonders of the Invisible World
“Explosively beautiful, wild, and fresh, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS is uplifting and challenging and painful and still somehow joyous all the way through. A helluva journey.” — Daniel Jose Older, New York Times bestselling author of the SHADOWSHAPER series
“Destroy All Monsters is an intricate and otherworldly thing of beauty, pain, and dinosaur plumage. I devoured every page.” — William Alexander, National Book Award-winning author of Goblin Secrets
“Destroy All Monsters is immediately tender, with an intimacy of friendship that is both startling and beautiful… Two protagonists, two overlapping narratives, two friends in a serious struggle to help each other and their worlds.” — Lightspeed Magazine
Kathleen Glasgow
Equal parts fragile, fierce, and mind-blowing, Destroy All Monsters is powerful testament to friendship and the things we’ll do for the people we love. Read this book and you’ll be a Sam Miller fan for life.
ALA Booklist (starred review)
A stunning and intimate new novel about the effects of trauma on individual lives as well as the connections that allow people face their own incredibly difficult pasts… readers will be unable to forget both the pain and eventual freeing illumination Solomon and Ash find in the past.
Christopher Barzak
In Destroy All Monsters, Sam J. Miller bravely examines the wounds that trauma leaves behind, and continues to beautifully study the way love and connection of all kinds holds us all tight until it gets better.
Tochi Onyebuchi
Destroy All Monsters haunts and delights. In this beautiful book are visions of what we might look like as victims, as villains, but, most importantly, as heroes. Sam J. Miller has done it again.
Kass Morgan
Sam J. Miller has cemented his status as one of the most visionary fiction writers of his generation. A staggering, stunning novel.
Jeff Zentner
In DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, Sam Miller has achieved something truly great—a book that masterfully combines the restless, electric imagination of sci-fi/fantasy with the luminous, beating heart of a contemporary coming-of-age story.
Rebecca Roanhorse
Laini Taylor meets John Green in this poignant young adult tale of parallel worlds and deep magic where trauma breaks but friendship heals. Miller offers no easy answers for fighting the all-too-real monsters in our lives but still allows space for hope, healing, and above all, bravery.
William Alexander
“Destroy All Monsters is an intricate and otherworldly thing of beauty, pain, and dinosaur plumage. I devoured every page.
Daniel José Older
Explosively beautiful, wild, and fresh, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS is uplifting and challenging and painful and still somehow joyous all the way through. A helluva journey.
Daniel Jose Older
Explosively beautiful, wild, and fresh, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS is uplifting and challenging and painful and still somehow joyous all the way through. A helluva journey.
Lightspeed Magazine
Destroy All Monsters is immediately tender, with an intimacy of friendship that is both startling and beautiful… Two protagonists, two overlapping narratives, two friends in a serious struggle to help each other and their worlds.
Lightspeed Magazine
Destroy All Monsters is immediately tender, with an intimacy of friendship that is both startling and beautiful… Two protagonists, two overlapping narratives, two friends in a serious struggle to help each other and their worlds.
School Library Journal
06/01/2019
Gr 7 Up—Ash and Solomon are best friends fighting against evil and their past in very different ways. Ash takes refuge in her passion for photography, while Solomon retreats to a vivid fantasy world, complete with dinosaur transportation. Ash is the only person in Solomon's life who takes his stories about Darkside remotely seriously. Most of the time Solomon is labeled as crazy or psychotic, even by his own father, who also happens to be the local high school football coach. When a string of targeted attacks puts the town on edge, Ash suspects that the football team is behind the incidents. As she uses her photography to get to the truth, a dark secret from her and Solomon's past begins to creep to the surface. Alternating voices and worlds are used to explore each character's struggle with current conflict and past trauma. Art and storytelling are featured both as coping mechanisms and tools by which the survivors find a voice and stand up for the truth. Ash and Solomon are a source of strength for each other, giving readers total friend goals. Ash avoids using many of the harmful labels others place on Solomon. While she is conflicted about how much to step in when he is in serious danger, Ash's actions are smart, mature, and compassionate. Ash and Solomon show that friends sometimes have to do the hard things to do the right thing. A balanced mix of realistic and fantasy elements keeps the action going and appeals to fans of both elements. VERDICT A combination of Andrew Smith, Laini Taylor, and John Corey Whaley that crosses genre borders and will win over readers.—Carrie Finberg, South Park High School, PA
AUGUST 2019 - AudioFile
Two teens caught between reality and delusion deal with the fallout from a traumatic childhood event in this moving audiobook. Ash, voiced by Brittany Pressley, lost her memory of the event when she fell from Solomon’s treehouse. Solomon, voiced by Zach Webber, has retreated into a fantasy world called Darkside, a city filled with magic, dinosaurs, and monsters. Pressley captures Ash’s personality with crisp consonants and clear emotions, while Webber’s voice is deep and minimally expressive—a stylistic choice that reflects Solomon’s mental state. As Solomon struggles to distinguish his hallucinations from reality and Ash tries to help her friend regain control, the two will uncover facts that draw their past into question. H.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2019-03-24
Four years ago, when best friends Solomon and Ash were 12, something happened that neither remembers.
The two reacted in very different ways: Ash struggles with depression, and Solomon has succumbed to serious mental illness. He dwells in Darkside, where dinosaurs live alongside humans and othersiders, humans with magical powers. In Darkside, Ash is a Refugee Princess under a spell, and Solomon has a crush on her bodyguard, Niv, who for safety has moved her from one undisclosed location to another ever since the riot when othersiders and humans clashed. In Ash's reality, she attends Hudson High, where her Solomon sometimes attends class and his stepfather, hunky Mr. Barrett, is football coach and vice principal. She also hooks up with Connor, Solomon's stepbrother. In Solomon's world, a wave of anti-othersider violence coincides with vandalism and dangerous pranks in Ash's, and the time the friends spend together in both places jars memories of the traumatic event that shattered their lives. Is it possible that their struggling friendship could be instrumental in saving two worlds? Miller (Blackfish City, 2018, etc.) delivers a tale of friendship and dovetailing realities: Each teen narrates from their own reality in alternating chapters, and the two narratives bleed into one another in a way that at times borders on confusing. The worldbuilding in Darkside will feel familiar to fans of fantasy. Ash is white; Solomon is white and Jewish.
A darkly complex read. (Fantasy. 15-18)
