Reviews - Our Hideous Progeny

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1.88k reviews for:

Our Hideous Progeny

C.E. McGill

4.04 AVERAGE

zazazakea's review against another edition

3.75

dark emotional hopeful slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

thiccadonna's review against another edition

4.25

This book not only provides such a perfect, detailed description of the britain of the 1850s as a boiling pressure cooker of scientific advances but it also stews and revels in the absolute rage of the downtrodden at the time, giving voice to the imperfect women who longed to make their mark, whose curiosity and thirst for knowledge and recognition, whose ambition made them strange, offputting, MONSTROUS by that society's standards. It manages to pay its homages to the original Frankenstein, inheriting that very gothic dna, while still doing its own thing and being a real ode to destructive, relentless, unabashed female rage. let us be monsters together!

alythiel's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Strong character development: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

kaybrooke's review against another edition

2.0

Meh. The story itself isn't mindblowing and the Frankenstein connection doesn't really come into play until well into the book. One of my early major criticisms was that the original story seemed mostly irrelevant beside the story of a female scientist trying to achieve respect and acclaim in her field at a time when women weren't even allowed to join the Royal Society. Though honestly, as much as Mary chafed at others dismissing her as merely her husband's illustrator, both she and her husband were portrayed as mediocre scientists at best, despite all the "scientific" discussions they had throughout the book (in quotes because everything is very vague, I assume because the author doesn't know very much about the topic themselves). You could argue that their success at replicating Frankenstein's experiment points to some kind of scientific genius, but again, it's all very vague and it's unclear what they actually did (that's keeping with the original story, anyway).

But it was, frankly, the author's note at the end that really left me sour. There's a line in there about how amazing it is that the whole of science fiction came from a "scared eighteen-year-old girl." Which one, I object to the continued erasure of Margaret Cavendish, who wrote "The Blazing World" like 150 years because Mary Shelley was born, and two, I object to the characterization of Mary Shelley as a quivering smol teenager, like she wasn't the daughter of a prominent early feminist, like she wasn't herself educated, like she wrote Frankenstein while terrified tears ran down her delicate little doll face. It might be silly that one little line in the author's note bothered me so much, but I probably would have given this a whole extra star if I'd skipped the author's note and wasn't left feeling disgusted by it.

alymarierice's review against another edition

3.0

I’m an animal lover who is very anti testing on animals, so the concept of the book was pretty unappealing to me once I realized what was going on. If I would have known probably wouldn’t have read it. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone unless they’re super into animal science and history and aren’t sensitive like me 😅