Wednesday, July 13, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on July 19, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is the newest novel by Mexican-Canadian author Silvia Moreno-Garcia, who is a big favorite of mine (Gods of Jade and Shadow, Mexican Gothic, The Beautiful Ones, etc. etc.).  This time around, the story is a take on the classic The Island of Doctor Moreau, with the story moved to the Yucatán Peninsula in 1870s Mexico - a time of colonial unrest between the colonial powers (The Mexican territory and the British colony in Belize known as British Honduras) and Indigenous Mayas.  Moreno-Garcia's works are usually excellent at taking typical plots and taking them to different directions, especially with her use of Mexican settings, so I was really eager to see where she went here.  

And while The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is a solid story, it also doesn't really go in any particularly interesting directions so as to stand out.  The story's Mexican setting works well as foreground but is mainly background until the book's final act, and really doesn't change much, and the story's biggest plot twist is one that pretty much every reader will guess from page 1.  Again though, it's all solidly done, and the main two protagonists have interactions and plot arcs that don't quite go as you might expect, with the book nicely averting the easy choice of how to develop their relationship, which I appreciated.  But Moreno-Garcia has just set such a high standard that this book just can't quite live up to my expectations.  

-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
1870s Mexico - particularly the Yucatán Peninsula - is a dangerous place....with conflict between the Maya people (supported by the British) and the Mexican estates, who would prefer to use them as labor rather than see them as people.  But for Carlota Moreau, such concerns seem utterly distant, as she grows up on her father's luxurious estate in Yaxaktun, accompanied only by the estate's housekeeper Ramona....and her father's creations, the Hybrids, beings made up of a combination of animal and human biologies.  Carlota wants only to be a dutiful daughter, with no interest in going elsewhere in the world, believing that she can be happy learning about what is out there entirely from books, and happy living alongside the hybrids she considers friends.  

But when a few new people come to Yaxaktun, things begin to change.  First off, there's Montgomery Laughton, a debt-ridden miserable man - heartbroken by a lost sister and a betrayed lover - who comes on to be Dr. Moreau's new majordomo.  And then, just as Carlota is turning into a young woman, there is the arrival of Eduardo Lizalde, the hot headed son of Dr. Moreau's patron, who is intrigued by Carlota's beautiful looks...to Montgomery's great displeasure.  

The recipe of Mongomery, Eduardo, Carlota, and the hybrids all coming together will soon prove explosive, and will force Carlota and the Hybrids to make choices about the lives they live and the futures they might possibly have....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is a take on a classic genre story - one that, even if like me you've never read the original, you'll have some idea about....the mad scientist Doctor who experiments on animals to make them more human-like, which will eventually lead to some sort of conflict between those hybrids and humans.  And this story follows through with that framework, shifted to the setting of 1870s Mexico (a setting which Moreno-Garcia nicely explains further in a little author afterward at the end of the book) - so the Hybrids are considered by Moreau's patron as a possible answer to the problems of importing cheap labor (with slavery banned, and various immigrant groups being difficult to bring over and Maya peoples being less willing to cooperate with the colonizing Mexicans).   

However, there is one new crucial essential character: Carlota, the daughter of the Doctor, who is bright and capable, even if as you'd expect is quite naive about it all.  And this is the story of Carlota and Montgomery (who per wikipedia is a take on an actual classic character from the original novel) as much as the Hybrids.  Carlota is a bit of a subversion of the usual version of this character: who usually feels kept and constricted in an estate, wanting to go away somewhere else and is desperate to escape into an outside she knows nothing about.  By contrast, Carlota is a dutiful girl who has little interest in the outside - instead she would rather get her knowledge of the world through books, and would rather stay with the Hybrids she kind of loves as extended family.  She's still a young woman for most of the book - with desires towards the first hot young man she sees - but she's not deliberately adventurous, wanting more to try to help those she loves in the place she loves than to go elsewhere.  

Which means that the plot here is jumpstarted not by her being rebellious and wanting to go out as much as the plot featuring others who want to take her out, and having Montgomery (a sad grizzled alcoholic and depressed man due to the wife who didn't love him and regrets regarding the sister he abandoned) screw things up by trying to do what's best for her, despite his lust.  And this works really well, as the characters act out familiar-ish plot beats that turn out in slightly different ways than you might expect (so we don't get an actual romance between the lead characters, as you'd usually expect from two POV character novels).  The story is thus excellently constructed from beginning to end for the most part.  

That said, while everything is well crafted, and works well together, it never really does so in a way that utterly stands out, even if the book does not go quite the way you'd expect with some character development.  It isn't helped by the book featuring one twist so obvious you'll expect it from page 1, to the point where it'll be distracting a bit as you wait for that twist to be revealed.  And while the setting is interesting, the book doesn't really do anything with it until the final act (and even then, not a ton), which makes the transfer of the plot to the Yucatán feel kind of wasted.

The result is certainly a solid novel that's a decent take on a classic of the genre, but just one that can't live up to Moreno-Garcia's other works.  Which is fine - again there's a solid book here, even if not one that I think will be among the best of the year, unlike some of her prior works.  
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)