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A review by starrybooker
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
3.0
Well that was a disappointing read.
There’s no doubt Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a talented writer. Her descriptive prose is unmatched, and her ability to ratchet up tension in a scene makes her an excellent horror writer. However, coming off the back of the sublime Mexican Gothic, I was left decidedly underwhelmed by The Daughter of Doctor Moreau.
There are a lot of problems with this book. I think it’s dual POV narrative style really hurt the story, and most of the novel felt quite disjointed as we flicked back and forth between the two, repeating scenes in different perspectives. It didn’t help that I didn’t much care for either of the main characters. Both Carlota and Montgomery spent most of the book as quite passive characters, moving through the novel on the whims of others.
Their interactions with each other also felt annoyingly inconsistent, shifting from warm to cold without any real reason. This was a problem with a lot of the characters actually, whose interactions are largely based on dialogue that tells us what they are, really than actions that tell us who they are.
Honestly though, the book’s main sin is that it was just kind of boring. I have absolutely no problem with plotless books (and sometimes kind of prefer them), but there just wasn’t enough meat on the bones of the narrative for there to be as little action as there was. Even by the time things really kicked into gear in the last third of the book, I cared so little about the characters that it didn’t captivate me as much as it should have.
All that being said, there’s still glimmers of greatness in the novel and I’m definitely going to be reading more of Moreno-Garcia’s work.
There’s no doubt Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a talented writer. Her descriptive prose is unmatched, and her ability to ratchet up tension in a scene makes her an excellent horror writer. However, coming off the back of the sublime Mexican Gothic, I was left decidedly underwhelmed by The Daughter of Doctor Moreau.
There are a lot of problems with this book. I think it’s dual POV narrative style really hurt the story, and most of the novel felt quite disjointed as we flicked back and forth between the two, repeating scenes in different perspectives. It didn’t help that I didn’t much care for either of the main characters. Both Carlota and Montgomery spent most of the book as quite passive characters, moving through the novel on the whims of others.
Their interactions with each other also felt annoyingly inconsistent, shifting from warm to cold without any real reason. This was a problem with a lot of the characters actually, whose interactions are largely based on dialogue that tells us what they are, really than actions that tell us who they are.
Honestly though, the book’s main sin is that it was just kind of boring. I have absolutely no problem with plotless books (and sometimes kind of prefer them), but there just wasn’t enough meat on the bones of the narrative for there to be as little action as there was. Even by the time things really kicked into gear in the last third of the book, I cared so little about the characters that it didn’t captivate me as much as it should have.
All that being said, there’s still glimmers of greatness in the novel and I’m definitely going to be reading more of Moreno-Garcia’s work.