Customer Reviews

Memoirs of a Monster Hunter: A Five-Year Journey in Search of the Unknown

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This book reads like the diary of a kid who wants to either 1. ) impress people with his "occupation" as Monster Hunter or 2.) irritate people with page after page of info about himself that we don't want when we buy a book like this. When you buy a book like this you want excitement and depth of purpose. He seems to fancy himself an Indiana Jones type, when in reality, he seems to be a guy whose wife pays the bills so he can run around having pretend adventures. Not very good. Not very good AT ALL. I'm actually quite unhappy I shelled out the money for this vacuous book, and I buy 30-40 books a year and take the good with the bad, as you must. Wish I hadn't bought it.

If you are interested in a serious discussion of cryptids, do not buy this book. Redfern spends the majority of the book describing his personal life. The information on monster hunting is limited and ancedotal at best. He comes across as a smug,self-serving free-loader who doesn't feel the need to bother with serious research into a very interesting topic. I'm surprised this got published, it is that bad. To use a very British term to describe Nick's work, bollocks!

Nick Redfern travels the world giving speeches at conferences dealing with UFOs, the paranormal, and cryptozoology. He is a self-employed writer and has several books out. You find this out because he constantly promotes and plugs them in this book. This self-proclaimed monster hunter looks back over a five year period and presents his memoirs which entail meeting a woman at a UFO conference whom he tries to bed down that night but ends up marrying later on, his `investigations' of various phenomenon, and his attachments to several paranormal television shows. There's also an abundant coverage of him hanging out with his fellows and lots of drinking. And let's not forget his lengthy chapter about the family dog which dies and they deal with its lingering spirit.

The book itself is easy to read as there is little prolonged in-depth coverage of much of anything except their dog. Redfern covers lightly some UFO stuff, largely plugging one of his books and various UFO conferences he attends, talks at, drinks at, and gets all his expenses covered along with a nice speaking payment. He travels to Puerto Rico (again all expenses paid) three separate times looking into the Chupacabras legend. And he also travels throughout Texas (where he lives after getting married and moving from his native England) going to the Big Thicket region filled with ghost lights and wildmen, seeks out the Goat-Man in several areas, as well as a ghost of a drowned girl and some surreally large fish and water beasties. And to add to the mix he speaks with a lady in Wisconsin about the Beast of Bray Road which may or may not be a werewolf (another fascination of his along with zombie movies and his apparent love of the word 'diabolical'). Redfern then explains how he feels that all these purported cryptids are not natural occuring creatures but extra-dimensional, spirits, or possibly alien leftovers or government experiments.

Redfern covers lots of material but in such fragmented and disorganized anecdotes that the book seems more like what he would chat about if you sat down with him and knocked back a few beers and had a meandering conversation of rapid topic changes. The book would have benefited from some better organization of the material. He travels a lot at other people's expenses and seems to only be involved in this type of stuff so that he can do just that, travel and not have to pay for it. He gives a presentation and then `has a night on the town'. For all he talks about such phenomenon, at points he doesn't even appear to buy his own shilling of material. To me, he apparently likes being called a `monster hunter', doing the travelling, and getting paid but doesn't truly `believe' in this stuff himself... just my opinion, I've never met the guy.

Overall, light reading but there's nothing in depth, no conclusions, and the stories are too short to get you interested in them. You'll get lots of plugging of his own books, learn his favorite adult beverages, and get more than you care to about his buddy Jon Downes. I doubt I'll be spending my money on anything else of his.

Redfern is quite possibly one of the worst authors I have ever read. His writing style is almost painful to read because he unnaturally adds the most ridulous adjectives into his sentences. The result is sappy, cumbersome writing that is awkward at best. Redfern also throws in quite a bit of profanity and references of a sexual nature, which was disappointing to me because I primarily bought this book to add to my classroom library. I'm a Middle School teacher and my kids are really into this kind of stuff, but there's no way I'm putting this one on the bookshelf.
For the plot, the book is mostly about his personal life, and his "monster hunting" is him wandering around Texas and Puerto Rico interviewing people. He has almost no noteworthy experiences of his own, and there was nothing to report that would hold up any weight to real scrutiny or the scientific method. I'm a pretty open-minded person about the mysteries of this world, but Redfern describes monster hunters as essentially a bunch of little boys who won't grow up and who make a living off of sensational half-truths, outright lies, and myths. Don't buy this book, and don't even read it. It's not worth the time or the money.

After reading and thoroughly enjoying Redfern's "Three Men Seeking Monsters" I could not wait to get started on "Memoirs of a Monster Hunter." What a disappointment.
Where "Three Men" was a rollicking good time, a fun trip with three unique and entertaining individuals, "Memoirs" is a self-indulgent disorganized mess. This book is filled with personal anecdotes that would only be impressive to either Redfern's family or his high school drinking buddies. There wasn't even any new information in this book, something Redfern usually delivers on, despite his writing style filled with cliches and terrible synonyms. Boo Mr. Redfern. Please leave your adolescent ego behind and write what I know you are capable of next time.

I really enjoyed 'Three Men Seeking Monsters: Six Weeks in Pursuit of Werewolves, Lake Monsters, Giant Cats, Ghostly Devil Dogs, and Ape-Menso I was totally let down by this rambling excuse for a book. There wasn't a SINGLE THING in it that indicated anything paranormal witnessed by Redfern, who definetly comes off as a little immature ('How cool is it not doing the nine to five thing?' is fine in a uni student, but starts to sound a little embarassing from a man in his forties (who also brags about having sex with his wife - not in context, but just to let us know he's getting some!)He actually managed to Scully me, making me think that Fortean phenomena can't be taken seriously if this is the type of 'research' that comes out of it. I'm all for levity in books - and there's plenty of that - but a little more 'dryness' might have made 'Memoirs' at least readable (I ended up skimming most of the book and I honestly don't think I missed anything. Buy 'Three Men..' instead...that's fun AND creepy, something 'Memoirs' fails to acheive on both counts.
And a PS - for a supposed paranormal 'expert' to recount 'The Vanishing Hitchhiker' as an actual event...don't get me started.

Being extremely interested in cryptozoology I picked this book up as it promised some interesting encounters with that of the unknown. That couldn't be further from the truth though. The book is composed of a lot of drinking, talking, and wandering around at others expense. Any details of the subject matter are usually just half-cocked stories from a friend of a friend of a friend. They never actually see or encounter anything worth mentioning. When he does claim to have seen something, rather than being treated to pictures of these "phenomena" we are given pictures of the author, his friends or something else that was extremely unnecessary to whatever was being discussed (I use the term lightly) in the chapter. Overall the book is more of a study in alcoholism, and a bunch of people that wear tin-foil hats. Avoid this one at all costs.

I have received email ads for this book from Amazon everyday for the past week. At this point, I would never ever buy anything from this author or anyone mentioned in conjunction with his work.

I love reading everything paranormal. I have watched a lot of documentaries that deal with searching or proving the existence of Paranormal entities. So when I saw this book in the library I was instantly attracted to it. The book is Redfern's account of the 5 years he spent in America chasing after monsters like bigfoot, Chupacabras, Moth-Man and others.

The book begins when Nick flies to the U.S for a conference where he meets his would be wife Dana for the first time. After a while they get married and they decide to stay in the Texas, U.S. for some time. He spends most of his time attending conferences. Now his research, or at least what he writes in his book, is mostly visiting the places where the monster was seen, talking to people who had seen them and also talking to people who have written books about them or are researching about them.

I didn't feel there was anything new in this book. The back of the book says
But do such creatures really exist? Can it be true that our planet is home to fantastic beasts that lurk deep within its forests and waters? Memoirs of a Monster Hunter proves the answer is a resounding yes!

ummm...well, not really. At no point it's actually proved that anything is real. Nor does the author ever comes across such creatures, at least not in this book. He does come across something called as Ghost lights and he claims to have seen them and taken a picture. But for some reason, he does not include the photo of the only possibly paranormal thing he has seen. And it's not like there are no photos in the book. I'm just confused about why he wouldn't include that photo, that's all.

But the book is an easy read and is not boring for most of the time. I liked reading about conferences and such and how seriously all this monster hunting and UFO thing is taken. The books as a whole had little substance and the only chapters I enjoyed reading were the ones about Chupacabras in Puerto Rico. The author calls Chupacabras vampires because they suck the blood out of the animals and leaves 2 holes on the neck. I loved this section because it was new to me and the setting of Puerto Rico was marvelous. But again, all he does is go around interviewing people and visiting places and not proving or even trying to prove anything.

With a bit of effort he could have proved or at least made an effort to find some solid evidence. For e.g. when he found the place which the goat man had possibly marked as his lair, how difficult was it to place a camera all night at the place or even stay overnight? But he says he did not have the time. Because seems like most of his time was spent in attending conferences or hopping from one place to another. At one point he did not go to an actual site where he and his friends were going to stay overnight to see if they could find anything, but preferred to interview some person who had probably seen something years back. I mean seriously?

To me, it didn't seem like he was actually interested to study the monsters in-depth. He was just there for the ride. Memoirs of a Monster Hunter was disappointing. And I don't even want to start about how he was shamelessly plugging his other books throughout. Sigh.

As I look over previous reviews of this book I find that a lot of them tend towards the negative side. Well, that's alright, I suppose. Not everyone has to like every book.
But then I noticed that the main things most people were complaining about were the VERY things I found most engaging.

"This is what it would be like if you were with Nick at a bar and he started to reminisce about his life in anecdotal fashion." one reviewer complains.

Well, GOOD HEAVENS!!! What's wrong with THAT? This is a chance to get to know the MAN behind the Monster Hunter. A loving and devoted husband, a never say die punk rocker, and a fun guy to hang out with when the chupacabras are prowling and "His Owliness" (The Owlman of Mawnan Woods) is a-levitatin' above the Horse Chestnuts.

The title says what this book is going to be. A "memoir" is an autobiographical account. It is going to tell you as much about a person's feelings as about the events in their lives.

The chapter on the loss of their little dog Charity is one that anyone who has ever loved a dog can relate to---and certainly if you've felt that your friend hasn't entirely left after the death of its body you'll find this chapter will stay with you.

No, this isn't ALL monster hunting, but there is a fair amount of that---and you get an inside look on some of Nick's television appearences from the "Oh, boy! We've got an expense account---it's time to PARTY!" point of view.

(What we have here is gonzo journalism being filtered through Redfern and it is delightful--the Spirit of Hunter S. Thompson is definitely smiling down on THIS fellow).

And with all the carousing and the weird tales of monsters and ghost lights and so on you are surprised to suddenly find yourself in a wistful mood after reading the legend of the Roca del Perro of the Condado Lagoon in Puerto Rico.

All in all I'd have to say this is a warm, engaging, at times light-hearted, and at times a little dark slice of a man's life.

A man who just happens to be one of the best investigators of matters paranormal, ufological, and cryptozoological in the world today.

And besides that he loves the Ramones and the Sex Pistols---he MUST be a genius!