“Comparison is the thief of joy.” ~Teddy Roosevelt

Monsters are in the zeitgeist right now as we are maybe beginning to realize that the real monsters are the so-called friends we made along the way: tech, capitalism, on-demand everything, free shipping, etc. This was an Audible Daily Deal that paid off in a well-crafted story that gives us three apparently unrelated tales to begin with and eventually pulls them all together as they deal with the ancient creatures that have been lurking on the sidelines who are now able to make their move to the front because we are all so distracted that we can’t be curious about things that are happening to those around us until it’s too late.

These beings are hungry and demanding, but then again so is everything else in our society so they sort of fit right in, using our amazing capacity for self-interest to make themselves go viral, if you will. They are also all about the rules, as is often the case with old magics. The main characters are two men with many a flaw who would do well in film noir: the women would also not be out of place in one of those flicks, struggling to keep it together and get to another day or trying to get the males in their lives to step up a bit.

However, those creatures have gotten very good at writing binding contracts.