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kaybrooke 's review for:
Our Hideous Progeny
by C.E. McGill
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.
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.