I will admit that at first glance, I found American Ghoul's premise of 'mythical monster attempts to integrate into society' a bit off-putting and tad overplayed, but after going through a slew of some rather depressing historical books, I needed a trip away from reality. Walt Morton's debut novel, American Ghoul, gave me that break. I have a lot to say about this book and not really enough room to say it in, so here it goes.

American Ghoul follows the senior year of ghoul Howard Pickman, as he battles sadistic jocks, befriends punk rockers and falls in love. What is a ghoul? With recent fantasy taking liberties in defining classic monsters, one can never be too sure. By the book's definition, other than their heterochromia (two different-coloured eyes) and need to consume human flesh for strength (lest they horrifically waste away), ghouls are seemingly ordinary people, quietly integrated within our society, doing nothing differently from us outside of plucking the occasional body from a grave or mortuary slab. The book wastes no time in keeping the ball rolling, with Howard having fled Georgia after witnessing the murder of his parents for being ghouls. Making his way to New Jersey to live with his estranged widowed grandmother, Howard must rebuild his life, all the while keeping a low profile.

Despite the graphic content (with some appetite-ruining descriptions of choice human cuts), the book has a lot to offer to those looking for a period drama. The aesthetics of the book's time period, 1978 to '79, are well-defined, and not just by referencing topic events of the era (of which there are many anyhow, with Howard and his new best friend Sebastian's desire to start their own punk rock group in the vein of the Sex Pistols among others). The cultural attitudes of a post-civil rights era America, with subtle nuances of racism, bigotry and other such ugliness, make themselves apparent without being in-your-face, and breathe life into the believable world.

The book isn't all high-school drama. Howard struggles with his status as a ghoul and his desire to be human. The guilt our young protagonist faces feels very real, and his constant clashes with his grandmother over the morality of defiling bodies for food are surprisingly well-written, and will definitely resonate with readers who have had ideological clashes with their family (though I hope not for Howard's reasons). The plot itself, while feeling rushed and occasionally present to simply introduce characters, will nevertheless hold your attention and keep you entertained throughout.

While I sound like I'm giving a lame compliment by saying that I wish it were longer, I'm disappointed by the fact that the book's length is inadequate to fully explore the interesting cast of characters it introduces. At 255 pages, American Ghoul is really the length of your average paperback, but why stop there? Book length always seems to be a toss-up between authors. Even in Stephen King's most excellent novels does he tend to introduce characters and subplots that pad the book by an extra hundred pages and nothing more (the better King movies, like the adaptation of Christine, do well at trimming the fat), and Philip K. Dick's works seem to always make a mad dash for the conclusion, favouring pushing the story forward over character development. I feel like this book falls in the latter. While character development isn't always necessary in books that are story-driven, with the cast merely players in driving events forward, this book is something completely different.

American Ghoul is trying to be a character-driven but it doesn't realize it. The book gives us some admittedly cool and potentially interesting characters, but doesn't do much in taking advantage of that. We're given Sebastian, a trouble- making punk rock hopeful from a upper-middle-class family, Ernie, an aging mechanic and playboy dating Howard's humorously eccentric grandmother, and the book's antagonists, the Sherman brothers, a pair of high-school jocks hell-bent on making others miserable. While the characters come off as harmless initially, they soon develop a sense of depth that deconstructs their stereotypes, but they aren't given enough breathing room to grow to their fullest potential.

This shouldn't be taken as a warning sign of aversion. After all, I did say that there was a lot to say about it. Would this book be much better if it had a hundred extra pages? Maybe, but regardless, American Ghoul is definitely Morton's first step in the right direction as a debut novel. It's clear that the author possesses the talent to imagine an interesting world with a similar cast, and I look forward to more of Morton's works. Working successfully as a humorous teen drama for adults with a supernatural variable to keep things spinning in the equation, American Ghoul is a novel that's worth your while. It's available as an eBook download on Amazon Kindle Books.

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5