Beast

Wonderfully Written Sea-Monster Action

I read this book forever ago when I was a kid and decided to read it once more now as an adult. I have to say, it was even better reading it this time.

I think Peter Benchly really knew how to paint the most riveting and well articulated picture with words. I could imagine everything happening on nearly every page for how brilliantly he told this story.

The character of Whip Darling is just superb in my opinion. A take no bull, gruff, extremely sea-knowledgable, hearty, sea-dog. The other supporting characters were well realized and great as well I thought.

In some ways I believe, Beast, is a lot like Benchly’s Jaws. Yet, it’s its own thrilling story as well. You get to learn about this Beast from the humans. But, you also get to see the Beast’s actions through a sort of narration of its own movements, instinctive thoughts and actions. Just awesome overall.

I was thrilled as a kid reading this book. But, as I mentioned, this was an even better story to me as an adult. I blazed through reading the whole in just two days. It’s not a seriously long tale. Still, I just couldn’t put it down so to speak and I had forsaken all my other regular activities so that I could stay glued to my iPhone screen, turning page after page, and ravenously eating up this thrilling monster story again. Luckily it had been so long since I last read the story that I had forgotten most of the big plot points, haha.

To me, authors such as Steve Alten (who I highly recommend as well) who wrote the Meg book series. Well, in my opinion he definitely followed in the footsteps of the great Peter Benchly and conjured up superb and action-packed sea monster stories as all. Yet, in my mind, there will ever only be one Peter Benchly and this book along with Jaws and White Shark are some of his best stories ever.

Addendum: Strangely enough in mentioning Benchly’s White Shark book. Well, maybe it’s a rights issue, I’m not sure. But it’s seemingly the only Peter Benchly book not offered here on Apple Books. The other eBook services I use didn’t offer it either. Not sure why? Yet, after reading this again I was so happy and wanting to read White Shark that I went on Amazon and ordered another hardcover of it to read again. I have the first one I ordered somewhere but can’t find it, :P.

Still, if you like monster stories and especially if, like me, if you like sea-monster stories. Then I believe you can’t go wrong in reading, Beast. Very highly recommended. And check out White Shark and, of course, Jaws if you haven’t read them.