Fantasy/Horror/Scifi Book Club - Man Eating Beasts

Hello everyone

In June we had a meeting on the theme of Generations, a picture of some of the sci-fi and fantasy books we read is attached.

For July we are learning more into horror with the theme of Man Eating Beasts.

So stories which feature animals or monsters with a taste for humans. Horror obviously gives us all sorts of real world creatures such as sharks and crocodiles, or cryptids such as bigfoot and the yeti, to completely supernatural beings like killer clowns. However for those who don’t like horror, fantasy and sci-fi can get in on the act as well. Fantasy has dragons and other vicious creatures, without it getting too gory. Sci-fi stories often feature aliens, zombies or lab made mutants for whom humans are on the menu.

As always you are free to read whatever you wish, as strictly or loosely as it fits the theme, and come and tell us about it on the day and whether you’d recommend it.

Below are examples from our members (and goodreads) to set the mood and give inspiration, but you are not limited to them.

• The Odyssey, by Homer (750 BC) - Given the upcoming movie, here’s the original the epic that follows Odysseus’s 10 year journey home after the Trojan War encountering classic Greek monsters such as the Cyclops and sea monster Scylla.
• The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien (1937) - A more light hearted adventure entry. Has plenty of creatures which try to eat the cast from dragon, giant spiders, trolls and goblins, but it's a children’s story so violence is minimal.
• The Birds, by Daphne du Maurier (1952) - A short story about flocks of birds turning on humans, set after WW2 in Cornwall.
• Jaws, by Peter Benchley (1974) - Surely needs no introduction, and summer-themed story to boot. A giant shark terrorises a sea-side tourist town.
• IT, by Stephen King (1986) - King of course has plenty of monster stories such as The Mist, Cugo etc in his catalogue, but I’ll limit his appearance in these examples to Pennywise, an interdimensional entity who looks like a clown and eats children.
• Jurassic Park, by Michael Criton (1990) - Bringing back dinosaurs for a zoo, what could go wrong? While the movie adaptation follows the basic story, the book leans more horror with the dino attacks, but also focuses more on the cautionary messaging on bioengineering.
• Relic, by Douglas Preston (1995) - Something stalks a New York museum at night, eating those who remain after closing hours.
• The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (2006) - One of our members really loves recommending this despite admitting its the bleakest things he’s read 😀 The grueling journey of a father and his young son in a post-apoctypic US, plagued not so much by monsters as cannibalistic humans.
• The Terror, by Dan Simmons (2007) - A fictionalised account of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which disappeared in the Arctic in the 1840s. The novel tells a realistic account of what may have happened to the ships… and adds in a snow dwelling monster.
• The Shuddering, by Ania Ahlbor (2013) - A group of friends are trapped in a blizzard, and are hunted by bloodthirsty monsters lurking in the freezing woods
• Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre, by Max Brooks (2020) - One of my favourites, a small isolated community of technologically-dependent city-dwellers in the woods are cut off from civilization and come under attack from the local bigfoot.
• The Night Begins, by Abigail F. Taylor (2023) - College freshman Darcy Mills returns to her childhood home in rural Texas to help her mother pack and downsize. Her father was killed there long ago, and there’s something in the woods - but from goodreads I understand this is more focused on Darcy’s inter-trauma for those who want more of that, and less creature feature.