A review by incunabula_and_intercourse
A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

What if Ernie and Bert Reenacted The Duke of Burgundy by Way of Mycological Frankenstein: a Novel

I love how the prose pastiches 19th century literature, down to the fear of writing blasphemy and the judgy omniscient narrator; it really serves the gothic atmosphere. And boy, the mycological horror!! It's one of my favorite subgenres, and Gregor's experimentation sure reminds me why.

Gregor and Simon are so incredibly Character, and their messy relationship and usage of their respective surrogate daughters as proxies was darkly hilarious—even as they become horrifically codependent and awful in their own ways. Funny that my girl Jennifer had the most sense despite

being eaten by mushrooms in the end

—but in all fairness, have you seen CHLOE? Would.

God, our botanical daughter makes me weep. The true extent of her intelligence, sapience, and desire is left ambiguous—so it's not a surprise when

she absorbs Jennifer after the wildest bout of weird lesbian monsterfucking ever—but damn it, you wanted the love to be true. You wanted her to be human. Her abandoning her human substrate and becoming a sentient house makes perfect sense, but it still hurts so damn much

.

A weird little book that I will be thinking about for a long, long time.