The Isle of Blood by Rick Yancey

The Isle of Blood by Rick Yancey 
(Simon & Schuster, 2011)

Summary from publisher:
"Rip a human being apart, shred him into pieces no larger than the length of your thumb, and see how much of him you can recognize... That blob of purplish substance there - a piece of his heart of perhaps a chunk of his liver?... Imagine an enormous robin's nest fashioned not from twigs and leaves, but from human remains."
On a quest to find the monster known as the "Holy Grail of Monstrumology" with his eager new assistant, Arkwright, Dr. Warthrop leaves Will Henry in New York.  There, the boy finds himself living with a real family; not facing midnight vivisections, narrow escapes, or confrontations with monstrosities, human and inhuman.  After months go by with no word from Warthrop, Arkwright returns with the devastating news that the doctor is dead.
Will doesn't trust Arkwright, and he can't believe -- won't accept -- this information.  Determined to find Warthrop, he journeys to London in hopes of finding his doctor still alive, knowing that if he succeeds, he will face something worse than all the monstrosities he has seen in his young life.  They will go to Socotra, the Isle of Blood, where human beings are used to make nests, where blood rains from the sky. 
In the deadliest adventure yet in the series that began with the Printz Honor-winning The Monstrumologist, which VOYA called, "gothic horror at its finest and most disturbing," Will Henry ust decide whether his loyalty to Dr. Warthrop is enough for him to make the ultimate sacrifice.

As a rule, I generally do not enjoy scary or gory books.  This one is both.  However, I found that I could not put this book down!  Even though I had not read the first two books in the story, I was able to fall right into Will Henry's world.  The way Yancy crafted this story was masterful.  Though parts of it made me cringe, I could not NOT keep reading!  I had to find out if Dr. Walthorp would be successful in finding his "Holy Grail," and if Walthorp and Will Henry would both make it to the end of the book alive.

This is definitely a book for older readers. First of all, at 557 pages, it is a challenging read.  The vocabulary and sentence structure are sophisticated; Yancey definitely achieves a Victorian feel in this novel.  The gore and violence are also more suited to an older reader.

Fans of The Monstrumologist series will definitely enjoy this latest installment, but don't let the fact that it's a third book scare you.  It definitely stands on its own.