It’s not unusual to encounter a book claiming that its main character is not an ordinary boy. There are those born with the ability to master magic, or sired by a powerfuly deity inheriting his/her extraordinary powers, or someone who has the ability to wield a legendary sword. John Wayne Cleaver is not an ordinary boy but he is not the type expected to save the world. In fact, he may be the one to endanger it.
John Wayne Cleaver is a clinically diagnosed sociopath and he has all the tendencies of becoming a serial killer. He sees serial killing as an art in itself and serial killers as true artist. However, he knows killing people is not right so to keep the monster inside him at bay, he created a set of rules he must strictly follow. So far he’s successful at trying to appear and act as normal as he can be. That is until a bona fide serial killer begins slaughtering innocent victims in his home town. John Cleaver thinks he is the only one who can understand the killer therefore the only one capable of identifying him, and ultimately, catching him. But to trace the killer’s activities means freeing himself from his self-imposed rules that may eventually unleash the monster the monster he was trying hard to contain.
The first thing that striked me when I began reading I Am Not a Serial Killer was John Wayne’s voice. Dan Wells managed to give him a voice that is both disturbing and refreshing. Being inside our main character’s head was no easy task. His thoughts and the way he processed them felt completely alien to me. At the beginning of the book, I saw myself as a mere audience to John’s dark narration. Take the first sentence of the second chapter as an example(note that John’s mother and aunt are the town’s local morticians):
"We didn't get Jeb Jolley's body that night, or even soon after, and I spent the next week in breathless anticipation, running home from school every afternoon to see if it had arrived yet. It felt like Christmas."
The passages get only darker as the story progress and as you read onwards the more you get pulled into John’s way of thinking. There were several points in the story when I caught myself completely inside John’s mind, seeing things the way he sees them. It really did messed up with my mind, but hey, I’m not complaining. You have to give it to Dan Wells. The guy knows how to make you see and think in a very different perspective.
One thing also worth noting is the book’s structure: it was one half crime investigation novel and one half supernatural-thriller. I can see how this may be a problem for some readers. It was easy to assume that the author ran out of idea on how to continue the story so he took an easy route by the unexpected shift of genre. But I am not in agreement to this opinion. The first half of the novel are spent on identifying the killer: who he is and what were his motives. In the similar fashion, this part also tells us about John Cleaver especially why he became who he is. Then at the second half, we see John battling with the killer/demon and at the same time — with his set of rules having neglected– battling with the monster inside him. The more John devise the perfect plan to stop the killer the more he succumbs to his inner monster. By this point, it was difficult to distinguish his true reason. Is he really concern for the safety of the people in his town knowing beforehand that he doesn’t process emotions the way normal people do or is he just satisfying the hunger for the kill the monster inside him feels? This was not an easy question to answer and the author does not force on you what to believe. Having the two-different-genre-part structure highlighted the conflict between a demon with a very human motivation and a human boy who may possibly have monstrous motives.
I Am Not a Serial Killer was not an easy read. It really have ways to make you feel uncomfortable on your seat and send shivers to your spine. (That particular scene when John was fuming over his mother in the kitchen shocked the wits out of me.) Without a doubt, this is a stand-out novel on the YA category. Dan Wells wrote a thrilling novel heavily rooted on his well-rounded and curious characters. I cannot promise you that you won’t regret reading this because there’s a huge possibility that you will, especially when you read it during night-time but that makes it more tempting to read it, doesn’t it? I am not a serial killer, but John Wayne Cleaver? That, you have to figure out yourself.
The middle part of fantasy series are always the trickiest. The world is already established in the first book(s) and information about the series-long plot are held back for the finale. Middle part books are always the one that is the most forgettable and there are cases when these books are just fodders. Such is the case in Michael Scott’s Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel and even Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson. I love both of these series but if you ask me what happened in The Necromancer or Battle of the Labyrinth, I will likely just give you a two-sentence long summary or worse, a blank stare. But if you ask me about the first book or the finale, I would tell you everything in detail and with vigor your ears might bleed.
