Reviews

The Workshop of Filthy Creation by Richard Gadz

kindledspiritsbooks's review

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3.0

Thank you to NetGalley and Deixis Press for giving me an ARC of this book. The Workshop of Filthy Creation has all of the hallmarks of a perfect Halloween read, it’s a daring semi-sequel to Frankenstein which picks up with the descendent of the infamous Dr Frankenstein (called Von Frakken in this story) and features all manner of grisly murders, scientific experiments and generally terrible people. Von Frakken has gone beyond the ambitions of his ancestors and, instead of reanimating a dead body, he has grown and given life to an entirely man-made body from scratch. Her name is Maria and after she escapes her creator and finds herself in the harsh world of London in 1879, she discovers that there are many, many people with opinions about her existence. Some want her studied, some want her locked up and many many many people want her dead while Maria is left trying to figure out what it means to just be. Honestly, I think the book would have benefitted more from focusing on Maria and her struggle to come to terms with who she is and what life she wants for herself rather than the repeated gruesome digressions focusing on the activities of various nefarious mad scientists. If you’re looking more for a gothic tale full of nightmarish body horror, this is the book for you. But if you’d rather have an even scarier story that focuses a girl trying to get on with her life while a bunch of powerful men try to make decisions about her and body, you may be left wanting.

adornhoe's review

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3.0

“I have made life. From nothing. Not from an array of corpses, not by forcing dead organs back into functioning, but by assembling flesh grown in this very laboratory. The pinnacle of eight decades’ research. Every inch of skin, every bone, every muscle, every blood vessel. Built by my own hands.”

The year is 1879 and the magnum opus of Wilhelm van Frakken (a descendant of Victor Frankenstein) has just escaped: Maria, the first completely lab-grown human (or not-human) finds herself in London, among new friends and enemies, and hunted by her creator. Now, the story alternately follows von Frakken, who leaves his secluded castle for the first time in decades and is inspired by the metropolis for further uses of his researches, and Maria, who wants to stop him at all costs.

My mixed feelings about this book are largely, I feel, a result of the book having mixed feelings about itself: I constantly had the impression that it teeters between being a fast-paced adventure story with rather flat characters and a focus on action, and a work that aims to raise serious issues for discussion. I enjoy both of these types of fiction and would not even say that they are mutually exclusive, but as it is, the book felt rather insecure and “wobbly” to me.

Its strength is in the descriptive and atmospheric passages which take the readers into various parts of London as well as the titular workshop. The focus on sensory impression shines especially in the moments that appall: “A damp, chemical stench came from the pitch darkness beyond. A smell of decay, of meat and mould, of old blood and rotting bones.”

And since natural history museums are one of my favorite places both in books and the real world, the scenes set in the Museum of Natural History were wonderful treats for me.

What dampened my enjoyment mostly was a certain heavy-handed on-the-nose-ness both in content and style.

It sometimes felt like the book worked with a to-do list of themes and tropes to tick off:

A likening of laboring bodies to machines? Check!
A critique of capitalism? Check!
Beauty standards and their connections to consumerism? Check!
A non-human character as an opportunity to discuss what (doesn’t) make us human? Check!

And while all these ideas work, they are also not brought up in a way that makes this book stand out from other texts dealing with similar topics.

A lack of development and ambiguity in the characters makes their moral conundrums rather easy to ignore – there is no character where it is not clear from their first appearance where they will position themselves. The good characters are good through and through, and the bad ones, especially von Frakken, indulge in supervillain monologues that could be declared as camp if the rest of the book did more to support these vibes. The literary references are equally straightforward, and even the style does everything to make sure that the readers will never end up having to think for themselves: “Maria wrapped her arms around herself, mostly for warmth but also in an unconscious attitude of defense.” – the latter part of this sentence perfectly exemplifies what I mean by doing the interpretative work that could have been left to a reader.

All in all, The Workshop of Filthy Creation is an entertaining read that I will forget soon – for someone who has never read a neo-Victorian Gothic/horror book before, this story provides a good starting point (if said hypothetical person can stand body horror and sciency gore), but all in all it does not contribute a lot to the genre or add new ideas. I would have wished for the myriad of topics and concepts that are mentioned to be presented in a way that is both more fleshed out and has more subtlety – either that, or for the book to fully lean into its elements of surreal melodrama.

I thank the publisher for granting me an ARC via Netgalley!

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ericarobyn's review

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dark emotional tense slow-paced

3.5

The Workshop of Filthy Creation by Richard Gadz is a chilling gothic horror story about what it means to be human. In these pages, you will see plenty of the darkness that humanity can create, but you will also see the light!

Full disclosure: I was given a free copy of this book per request of an honest review. This did not affect my rating in any way.

Centering around an artificially-created being who goes by Maria, this story is unsettling from the start!

As Maria and her host, a biologist named Professor George Hobson, arrive in London after fleeing the man that created Maria, Hobson tries to keep her a secret at first. But his quest for knowledge gets the better of him and he reveals her to a small group of friends.

As you can likely guess, this reveal doesn’t go well and it sends the story into a tailspin of horror. From betrayal and violence, to an attempted forced exorcism or something along those lines from the transfixed religious folk… we see it all!

From the start, readers hearts will go out to poor Maria. The further into the story you get, that feeling will only grow. She’s such a powerful character, you can’t help but be drawn to her and hope for only the best.

Throughout the tale, the atmosphere and the settings that the author creates really paints a dark picture. Some of the description is done so well, you will feel like you’re standing in the streets or in the factory watching the scenes play out. And as a heads up to squeamish readers, there is some body horror involved, so tread lightly here if that bothers you.

The author also finds time to discuss the horrible working conditions for the lower classes and the unfairness of the class system itself.

As Maria sees everything playing out, I loved getting to see how she approached every situation with a bit of innocence but a heavy sense of logic. This was such a neat blend that even though I dreaded seeing her go through something else, I also couldn’t wait to see how she handled a new tricky situation. Maria is certainly a character that never disappoints!

My Favorite Passages from The Workshop of Filthy Creation

It was almost six o’clock in the evening, and the docks were crowded and noisy. London was beginning to breathe out its workers, just as it had breathed them all in twelve hours earlier. From home to work, work to home, in and out, inhaling and exhaling the industry and economy of the city. A steady flow of people pulsed through the capital’s streets and alleys, blood flowing through the veins of a living creature.

To the north of Whitechapel High Street, a spider’s web of dim streets and alleyways crept out into spitalields and the Mile End New Town. Narrow passages met to form small backyard squares, overlooked by surrounding buildings and cloaked in perpetual shadow, like deep sinkholes in the forest of brick and slate. Chimney smoke from dwellings and factories oozed into the low clouds, congealing the air into a bilious-smelling, viscous mist that languished around street corners and upper floors, never lifting.

Here, people walked with their heads down, minding their own business. The bright hubbub of the high street could have been a thousand miles away.

“The ability of your species to hate is breathtaking.” 

The cavernous entrance hall of the museum was a cold mass of shadows.

My Final Thoughts on The Workshop of Filthy Creation

Ready to dive into a dark and dreary tale about gruesome medical practices set in Victorian London? Go pick up The Workshop of Filthy Creation today! I can’t wait for you all to meet Maria!

sucharita's review

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

5.0

horrorbound's review

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adventurous dark informative mysterious tense medium-paced

5.0

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