Oh look. A new Monster Blood book to cover. It's been quite a while hasn't it? Hmmm, now how did the last book leave my mortal psyche again? Oh right. In complete and utter agony. But what is this you say? No Evan? No Andy? No Kermit? Could this finally be the one that undoes the mess? Let's get milking with Monster Blood For Breakfast!
STORY
Matt Daniels (who we met in the HorrorLand section of the last book) is pretty much a perfect kid. A star athlete, well liked by everyone in school, and even by his teacher, a former astronaut named Mr. Scotto. Life would be simple for Matt except for one thing: Bradley Wormzer, his annoying next door neighbor who seems to just enter the Daniels house at any time, even if he wasn't invited. He's like Urkel, but somehow less endearing. How so? Well, he throws a dead fly into Matt's cereal, then drinks it up, while wiping his face with the sleeve of Livvy, Matt's sister. Oh, and their mom doesn't care at all, because Goosebumps parents, but even in this case, you have this kid going around, being a jackass, just Kramering himself into the house, and you scold your kids? Yikes. Bradley is also known to just paw at Matt's stuff, and use his laptop, often ordering weird stuff online, like a can of stench called Gas Attack, which he tortures the Daniels sibs with.
So, we're well established that Bradley is kind of a scumbag, but things get worse when Matt gets to school. Bradley shows Matt a rock he claims is from Venus, but when he's shown that it's fake, just throws it at a stop sign, which smashes into Mr. Scotto's windshield. Matt, of course, gets blamed. Then during a test, Bradley tries to cheat, then blames Matt for trying to show him the answers. This gives Matt two strikes from Mr. Scotto, which also means a possible suspension on the third strike, which is especially bad for Matt because that means he's out of the upcoming swim meet.
Heading home, annoyed, he hopes for some respite from Bradley, but nope. He's in his room, screwing with his laptop once again. After spying Matt's science fair project of a birdhouse with a computer chip on it, Bradley makes his leave. Matt goes to see what damage Bradley did on his laptop. And he sees the words MONSTER BLOOD on the screen, with the words "Enjoy your monster blood" being said over and over again. And somehow, even when turning the machine off, and taking the battery out, it won't shut up. So, add bricking Matt's computer to the "must kill Bradley" list.
He goes to kill Bradley, only to instead get back a shirt that Bradley of course stole. We also learn that Bradley is scrawny, his ribs literally stick out. Matt inquires about what he did to the computer, but Bradley only responds by saying he's ordered something really cool that'll show Matt. So the attempted murder is postponed, at least until the next day when shocker of shockers, Bradley rips off Matt's science project. Matt's had enough and grabs Bradley, ramming him into a locker, only to be caught by Mrs. Grant, the principal. A suspension seems imminent, but uncharacteristically, Bradley comes to his defense, saving him from the suspension. Bradley just tells Matt again that what he ordered will come very soon and it's gonna change everything.
As Matt heads home, he gets accosted by two men, who want something from him, saying that they never should have delivered it to him. But he ends up saved by Mr. Scotto in time. That evening, Bradley comes over with his purchase, a green egg filled with Monster Blood. And it's more or less established that Bradley got this off the dark web. Sick of being treated like a weakling, he hopes to eat the monster blood and become big and strong. Matt stops him from eating it, by, what else, overpowering him. He tries to put the monster blood away, but the slime sticks to him for a bit until he manages to pry it off, only for it to keep growing, to the point Matt has to shove it all in a piggy bank. He wakes up in the middle of the night to see his ivy plant has grown eight feet tall as some of the monster blood got inside it. He checks the bank, only for the monster blood to attack him again. He manages to fight it off and get it into his duffel bag.
The next day at breakfast, Bradley's there again, being a pain. Matt tries to get him to listen about the monster blood, but Bradley continues to annoy. He goes to check the monster blood again, but it's vanished. Turns out Livvy put some in Bradley's cereal as revenge. But the tables end up turned worse for Matt, because Bradley switched bowls with him and Matt's now ingested the monster blood. The growth begins at school as Matt feels his body begin to get bigger and his clothes tighten. He heads to the swim meet, hoping he can hide his freakishness in the pool. He starts swimming, only to realize he's now eight feet tall. Yet somehow, he still manages to win for his team.
After he manages to escape the pool, he tries to get dressed and leave, only for his shorts to break and, yep, for him to be naked. And that's officially the creepiest thing to happen in this whole book. Matt thinks that if the water made him grow faster, maybe drying off will shrink him, so his master plan is for this giant, naked boy, covered in towels, to enter the girls locker room and use the hair dryers to dry off. I feel like I'm going to be on some list for reading this. The dryer plan fails, so he leaves the school and tries to sneak home through the bushes. Now too big to even sleep in his bed, Matt decides to go see Bradley to see if he can help at all. As he leaves however, he gets accosted by the two men again. Matt tells them about the monster blood, but they end up confused. They were talking about the Gas Attack can.
Matt, now nine feet tall, lumbers into Bradley's house, setting off the burglar alarm. He tells Bradley to find the packaging that the Monster Blood came in, for any hope of an antidote. Police begin to arrive, when suddenly Matt starts shrinking. Not just back to normal size, but smaller. But before he shrinks away, Bradley points out the Monster Blood was just a 12 hour trial. Matt snaps back to normal size and all is well.
TWIST ENDING
The science fair arrives as Matt still goes with the bird house project. Bradley arrives, with Matt's giant ivy plant, which wins him the first prize. Matt's pissed, but then he notices the plant begin to wrap itself around Bradley's leg. He congratulates Bradley, saying he definitely deserves what's coming to him.
ENTER HORRORLAND
When we last left off, Britney Crosby and Molly Molloy were left in HorrorLand all by themselves after Britney's parents disappeared. They ran into Billy and Sheena Deep. After trudging through Quicksand Beach, Britney and Molly disappear. Billy and Sheena run into Matt Daniels, and the three make it to a cafe, where they see Molly and Britney. However, when they enter, the two girls vanish. And somehow Billy and Sheena have gone invisible!
The three kids soon notice the mirrors in HorrorLand are some kind of trick mirrors. Somehow Billy ends up being visible again, but Sheena stays invisible with no explanation. The kids bump into the Monster Police, a pair of horrors named Benson and Clem. They don't hear Sheena and think the kids are making stuff up. This gets compounded when they say that there is no cafe, it's just a brick wall. The MPs take the kids to a detection chamber in a science lab, and start prodding them for answers over something they're looking for. Matt thinks it's the keycard he was given, but after both Matt and Billy are X-Rayed, it's not the case.
The three kids make a run for it, and end up in Dr. Twisted's science lab, a fake park lab. But what they run into is some real monster blood, which Billy accidentally drops. The monster blood starts to attack Billy and Sheena. Matt tries to use the keycard for some reason, but that proves fruitless. Suddenly Byron, the horror from an earlier edition shows up, and uses a mirror to stop the monster blood. Suddenly the MPs show up and take Byron away without much explanation. The mirror he holds breaks as he's carried out. Sheena is now missing as well. Matt and Billy check the mirror pieces and inside they see Molly and Britney sitting in a carousel that's engulfed in flames!
CONCLUSION
So, for all the ranting and raving I've done over my general disdain over the Monster Blood sequels, it should come to a shock that I... actually kind of liked this one? But, for all my issues on how the sequels didn't follow the origins from the first book, how can I look past these? Simple. With this being the first book to not feature Evan and the goon squad, I can consider this new canon. One that at least feels a bit more proper to Monster Blood than what the other sequels tried to accomplish. We have a generally likable character in Matt, whose problems in life are more understandable. Considering that he has to deal with one of the most detestable characters in the history of Goosebumps in Bradley Wormzer.
Unlike Andy, who goes from trying to help change Evan's mopey demeanor to becoming the devil on his shoulder, constantly telling him to use the monster blood because "it'll be fun", Bradley is written from the shoot to be a real scumbag with no sense of common decency or personal space. He's set up to be someone who tries to ruin Matt's life from the get go, so when he ends up unknowingly poisoning Matt with the monster blood, it's less infuriating. As for the Monster Blood, it actually feels like a threat for most of the book, growing uncontrollably and attacking Matt. Even the giant stuff feels better because unlike Monster Blood III, it's given enough time to feel like it matters (though admittedly a bit too much time, making certain scenes uncomfortable) and we aren't spending three or four chapters on failed experiments.
What we get here is, for the first time, a reasonable sequel to Monster Blood. One that still ignores the whole witch cat stuff, but one that doesn't feel like a total waste of time. It could have built up more scares, but the scenarios still flowed fine enough. In the end, it becomes my first wholly positive Monster Blood review. Monster Blood For Breakfast! gets a B+.
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