This is the first book I completed for my Goodreads 2013 reading challenge, and I can say that the bar has been set so low that it can only get higher. 
 Hindsight is 20/20, but if I'd read the afterword first, I'd have known that this is Citro's first novel, though it was his second published. So it wasn't good enough to get published on its own; he had to publish something better (presumably) and build a name for himself. Ugh. 
 His afterword notes that he wrote the characters and the setting as tribute to the gothic horror novels of Stoker and Lovecraft, but his homage really falls flat. The characters are underdeveloped and forgettable, the plot and conflict are boring, and there's very little atmosphere. Add to that one of the worst narrators I've listened to (he reads the dialogue even more goofy than it is and each character ends up sounding like a queer amalgamation of child and octogenarian) and you've got yourself one dull little monster book.