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Reviewed by Romuald Dzemo for Readers' Favorite
Simon McCall’s Mac Versus Monsters: The Cumbria Chronicles combines eight atmospheric volumes into one captivating story that follows a former Royal Military Police investigator called Connor “Mac” McClymont. He now lives and works out of a converted black-and-white Land Rover ambulance he calls The Badger. He is still haunted by a supernatural encounter that happened in Iraq twenty years earlier. Armed with cold iron, silver-tipped bullets, and an investigator’s sharp eye and patience, he hunts monsters across the landscapes of Cumbria: the lakes, the fells, the ancient walls, and the coast. Each book offers a standalone case steeped in authentic local folklore: a vengeful Fae on Elva Hill, an imprisoned entity beneath Skiddaw, a tormented Grey Lady, a lake monster in Bassenthwaite, and a phantom barge on the Solway. Each story traces Mac's transformation from a solitary fighter into a Fae-appointed Warden of the north.
Mac Versus Monsters pulled me into a world that felt like George R.R. Martin’s Winterfell in Game of Thrones, a real triumph with a Lake District that is more than a backdrop, a living, breathing world captured with the love of a walker and the imagination of a folklorist. Against this backdrop, Simon McCall delivers a story that skillfully fuses folk horror with military action, unfolding with patient investigations before erupting into brutal bursts of action. I loved the episodic cases and how well the author builds thrill after thrill, offering a genuine, serialized Warden arc. Mac is multilayered, and his face speaks of the struggles he has been through, a man who grieves quietly and whose discipline solidifies the purpose of a person with unfinished business. The humanity of characters like the anxious Father Carrick and the enigmatic Magi Yusuf adds to the entertaining quality of these tales. The writing is exceptional, and the terrific descriptions capture details of the actions, sights, smells, and other imagery that flood the senses. This book is gripping, refreshingly original, and the perfect work for fans of folk horror.
