The Supernaturalist

The Supernaturalist by Irish author Eoin Colfer is a futuristic young adult science fiction novel about an orphaned boy named Cosmo Hill. Cosmo meets a group of strange outcasts called the Supernaturalists, teenagers who have been experimented on or otherwise harmed in ways that have gives them strange physical and mental traits. The Supernaturalists rescue Cosmo, and he joins the gang in their mission to destroy the Parasites, life-sucking blue monsters that are wreaking havoc all over Satellite City.

The Supernaturalist is set in the third millennium in a fictional place called Satellite City, which is presumable somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere on Earth. When the book begins, Satellite City is controlled primarily by the Satellite, which is controlled by a large entity called the Myishi Corporation. However, as the novel progresses, the Satellite is losing contact with Earth, causing both small and large-scale disasters for the city's residents.

The book's protagonist, Cosmo Hill, an orphan named after the place where he was found, lives in the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys. He and his fellow orphans are treated like human guinea pigs, and their caretakers regularly conduct strange experiments on their minds and bodies, often with catastrophic effects. When Cosmo is being transported from a record store back to the institute, the truck that he and his friend Ziplock are riding in crashes. The two boys try to escape but are tailed by one of the institute's wardens. During the chase, the boys fall into a damaged generator, and Ziplock is crushed to death. Cosmo lives but sustains many injuries, and he can feel his heart beginning to stop. While this is happening, he suddenly sees many floating blue creatures, one of which lands on his chest and begins to suck the life out of him. Before he is killed, three teenagers appear out of thin air and shoot the blue monster. Cosmo begs the teenagers to take him with them, wherever they are going, and though they are shocked that he can see them, they agree.



Cosmo wakes up in a warehouse, where his injuries are being healed. He finds himself among the Supernaturalists, who explain their stories to him. Mona, Lucienn (a.k.a. Ditto), and Stefan are all teenagers whose parents were lost in accidents or tragedies, and whose trauma gave them the ability to see those blue creatures, called Parasites. They refer to themselves as Spotters, because they can see the creatures. Because of their abilities, the trio attempt to kill as many Parasites as they can. They are reluctant to let Cosmo into their group, but ultimately decide that he is worthy when he uses his knowledge from the Institute to save Mona when she is shot with a poison dart during a mission.

One night, the four teens head to a drag race, where they anticipate there will be many fatalities and therefore many Parasites. During the race they are captured by hired lawyers from the Myishi corporation and are taken to meet Ellen Faustino, the president of the company. Ellen explains that she is also a Spotter, and that the Parasites are reproducing faster because of the teens' efforts. She sends them on a mission to destroy the Parasites’ hive and take care of the problem once and for all.

After taking a space ship directly to the Satellite and running a scan to find the Parasite hive, the teenagers discover that the Parasites are all living underneath the Clarissa Frayne Institute. They detonate the electric bomb that Ellen gave them, which does not cause damage to any humans but does erase all the Parasites. Immediately after their mission is complete, however, the crew discovers Ditto talking to a surviving Parasite. They assume he is a traitor and kick him out of the group, but before he leaves he tries to explain to them that Parasites actually try to remove pain, rather than take life away. The teens don't know what to believe, but before they can reevaluate they are kidnapped again by Myishi.



Once they are captured, Ellen reveals to the teenagers that she has been using them for her own means – she wants to kill all the Parasites, which do in fact take away pain, and breed them in a lab to scrub nuclear reactors. She also admits that she was responsible for the accident that killed Stefan's mother. The teens discover Parasites under the floor in one of Ellen's labs, and attack. In the fight, Stefan is shot near his heart, but as the sniper prepares another fatal shot Stefan's knees buckle, and the shot releases the Parasites from their cage. The Parasites remove Stefan's pain as he slowly dies, and the three remaining teenagers escape.

The book ends when the Supernaturalists, now only three once more, regroup and plan to fight more supernatural beasts. Ellen is sent to Antarctica by the mayor of Satellite City, where she will work on nuclear reactors.

Eoin Colfer is a writer from Wexford, Ireland who began writing books for children after working as an elementary school teacher in the UK. His books are primarily science fiction and often take place in a world based loosely on the cyberpunk movement, where humans interact with technology in strange new ways. Colfer became famous when his book Artemis Fowl became a New York Times best-seller. Since then, more than half of his novels have become New York Times best-sellers. His most famous works are the Artemis Fowl series, his standalone novel The Wish List, and The Supernaturalist. A film adaptation of the Artemis Fowl series will be released by Disney in 2019.