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Book Review: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

cover art for The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno Garcia

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Del Rey, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593355336

Available:: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Buy: Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com

 

 

This reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau takes place on the Yucután peninsula in 1871 against the backdrop of the Yucután Caste War. A hacendero, Joseph Lizdale, hires the adventurer Montgomery Langdon, a functional alcoholic with a special set of skills that include hunting, taxidermy, and working with dangerous animals, as mayordomo for the isolated estate occupied by Doctor Moreau, who is researching creating human/animal hybrids as replacements for rebellious Mayan workers, his daughter Carlota, and the more successful hybrids.

 

Six years later, Montgomery is content in the company of the Moreaus and their hybrids and Carlota has grown into a young woman. Lizdale’s funding is drying up, and the doctor’s research is stalled. Eduardo and Isidro Lizdale arrive without the elder Lizdale’s knowledge demanding men to help chase down Mayan rebels. Carlota defuses the confrontation by inviting them in. She and Eduardo fall in love and he asks her to marry him. Change, and revelations, are coming.

 

The point of view alternates between Carlota and Montgomery. I really liked Montgomery’s voice and enjoyed his character. Carlota frequently grated on me probably due to her naivete and meekness, but she was kind and loyal. Watching their relationship develop was interesting- he was a more thoughtful man than he often appeared.

 

The monstrousness of Moreau and his work is evident to the reader early on but it’s only as Carlota realizes it that we really see it. The monstrousness of the hacenderos, even one as handsome as Eduardo, is easily revealed. The hybrids, who appear to be monsters to the humans, are less monstrous than their creator and those who wish to exploit them.

 

This is a fast, engaging, easy read. You don’t have to be familiar with the source material, but it did enhance my reading experience.

 

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on January 24, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope

 

The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope.

Redhook, 2022

ISBN-13 ‎978-0316377911

Available:  Paperback, Kindle edition, Audible

Buy:   Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com

 

The Monsters We Defy takes place in an alternate Washington, D.C. during the Harlem Renaissance. This world has Enigmas (similar to demons) who will offer you a gift (Charm) always in company with a catch (Trick). Clara has the second sight. Her Charm is a mystery, but her Trick is to help anyone who asks. A woman brings her son, who has become unresponsive, to Clara for help, but there is a ward around the cause that prevents her from helping. The condition spreads through the poor Negro population, with the “Afflicted” then being collected in trucks and disappearing. The Enigma who holds Clara’s debt, the Empress, tells her a ring worn by Miss Josephine, an opera singer in cahoots with the mob, is the cause of the Afflicted. The Empress says she will clear Clara’s debt and that of any who help her acquire the ring, except the Enigma called the Man in Black.

 

Clara meets Israel Lee, a musician in debt to the Man in Black, who also wants the ring and to prevent the Empress from getting it. Israel’s gift is to be able to hypnotize with his music and be admired by all, but his Trick is that he cannot have true friends. In addition, she meets Jesse Lee, who can erase memories, at the expense of his true love being able to recognize or remember him, and Aristotle, an actor who can play any role but never be seen as himself. They, and Clara’s albino roommate, a former circus freak, plan to take back the ring at a party for the Luminous 400, the wealthy Black upper class.

 

Clara is based on Carrie Johnson, a 17 year old girl , who shot and killed a detective who broke into her bedroom during the Red Summer of 1919. She was convicted, but got a second trial where she was freed. Langston Hughes also appears as a minor character. There’s also a “drag bsll” which is pretty cool! Zelda is a really fun character and learning about Black albinism was really interesting. Penelope had challenges with researching during the pandemic, but the world-building is great, and this is a fascinating read. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Posted on September 6, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

Inkyard Press, 2021

ISBN-13: ‎978-1335402509

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Buy;   Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

Wow. Polydoros set out to write a work of historical fantasy about Jews and Judaism not set during the Holocaust, and was inspired by an article about H.H. Holmes to set his story among Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

 

Alter, the main character, was ill as a baby and named to avoid the notice of the Angel of Death, but people around him frequently die. Alter is also gay, but in denial and ashamed. He is in love with his roommate Yakov, who leaves to meet someone and is found drowned the next day, the most recent of several Jewish boys who are dead or missing.

 

Alter, a member of the burial society, is helping immerse Yakov in the mikveh when he thinks he sees Yakov move, and jumps in the mikveh to pull the body out. Instead, he is possessed by Yakov’s dybbuk (a dybbuk is a malicious spirit, usually the dislocated soul of a dead person with unfinished business). Alter’s only choices to save his own soul are either0 to exorcise the dybbuk or to find Yakov’s killer and exact revenge. Luckily, he has the help of Raizel, a unionist working for an anarchist newspaper (the local matchmaker keeps trying to hook them up), and Frankie, an ambitious Russian Jewish teenage criminal and boxer who heads a gang of thieves.

 

This is such a layered, detailed story, both in the integration of the various aspects of Jewish culture and the Eastern European immigrant experience, and the vividness of the Chicago and World’s Fair setting. In addition, it really reveals the viciousness of antisemitism in this country and how it also traveled from overseas. I think people don’t really think about how insidious and common it was. It’s truly a Jewish horror story, and there aren’t too many of those around. I’m so impressed with the research and writing on some very difficult-to-address topics.

 

The City Beautiful won the 2022 Sydney Taylor Award and was a finalist for the 2022 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, the 2021 Lambda Literary Award, the 2021 National Jewish Book Award, and the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Toung Adult Novels. The attention is well-deserved.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on August 29, 2023 by , Reply
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