Our Hideous Progeny: A thrilling Gothic Adventure

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A fantastic read: I felt everything about Mary, her simmering anger and her intellectual delight' FREYA MARSKE, author of THE LAST BINDING trilogy C.E. McGill's Our Hideous Progeny is a brilliant, necessary reworking of the Frankenstein trope. In it McGill explores and questions relationships across the gender binary and documents the ways that equivalent actions by men and women can be viewed in completely different (and damning) ways. When Mary - a scientist struggling to make her mark in 1850s London - discovers journals belonging to her great-uncle, Victor Frankenstein, she embarks on what might be the greatest adventure of all.... In this gothic adventure, debut novelist McGill builds on Shelley's iconic story by adding sharp-minded female protagonist Mary, who sets out to discover the truth about her great-uncle Victor Frankenstein's disappearance in the Arctic. STYLIST, 'The best new feminist retellings of classic stories to read in 2023'

A gripping Gothic tale of grief and ambition, passion and intrigue.”—Jess Kidd, author of The Night Ship This is no typical revisiting of Shelley’s iconic tale...This is a post-Gothic treat, an enjoyably moody, fog-drenched fictional commemoration of women in science"— Booklist (starred review)

I loved this dark journey into the forbidden and unpredictable creation of life from... death. It was a weird and wondrous tale of things that should maybe not exist. The question of existence, love, science, and so much more wrapped up in this existential story.

I loved every second of this! It’s such an electrifyingly creative and wholly original take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and I genuinely couldn’t put it down. If you like books that are thrilling but not overly scary. I would put this in the realm with The Memoirs of Lady Trent series.Mary is the great-niece of Victor Frankenstein. She knows her great uncle disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the Arctic but she doesn't know why or how... A fantastic read: I felt everything about Mary, her simmering anger and her intellectual delight, so very clearly." - Freya Marske Mary is the great-niece of Victor Frankenstein, who she knows disappeared under mysterious circumstances. But when she discovers some old family papers, she learns the reason for his disappearance but also sees a way for herself & Henry to get themselves known. She knew she had a great-uncle who had been a scientist, went mad, and died in the arctic, but knew little else about him. When she uncovers the notebook kept by that great-uncle, Victor Frankenstein, she proposes to Henry that they build on his work.

Mary is the great-niece of Victor Frankenstein. She knows her great uncle disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the Arctic, but she doesn’t know why or how. . . . What a book this is. It's grand; it's sumptuous. It's horror and mystery, a literary thriller. Impeccably researched and elegantly written. I LOVED IT! One of my two fav. books so far this year... In two aspects, though, I wished for a bit more from the novel: pacing and the creature. The tempo of the story is sometimes too slow, too steady, and I never understood the true nature of the creature. Is it dangerous? Gentle? A threat to society? Aside from a few glimpses of its behavior here and there, the creature itself is only a secondary character in the story when it should’ve played a larger role, it being the Frankenstein monster. Witty, dark and sharp as a scalpel, it's a dazzling exploration of the macabre ambitions of Victorian science and a moving meditation on grief. C.E. McGill brilliantly captures what it's like to be a woman in a man's world. LIZZIE POOK, author of MOONLIGHT AND THE PEARLER'S DAUGHTER

Nevertheless, the book is a superb debut. McGill sure has a sunny career ahead of them. I’m jealous of their talent. But on the precipice of success, Mary begins to question the ethics and morality surrounding their creation and the love that she has developed for the creature. So. This is supposed to be a queer feminist retelling of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein". We follow Victor Frankenstein's great-niece, Mary, in 1853 London. Mary and her husband are struggling financially and professionally. But Mary believes that she has found something about her great-uncle's disappearance that can help them change the world of science. Readers of science fiction will find this title a "ripping good yarn," but readers looking for something more substantial than entertainment will find in Our Hideous Progeny a wealth of ideas—and it's those readers who will, I think, most appreciate this title.

The tide begins to change, however, when Mary finds old documents belonging to her Uncle Victor. After reading them, she decides to follow in his footsteps, thereby devising a plan to create life. She and Henry, in time, construct a patchwork creature, made from pieces and parts of deceased animals; a creature that will ultimately drive the couple apart due to Mary’s love for it and Henry’s desire to exploit it.The reason I’m not giving this a full 5 stars, is the far-fetched display of Mary’s connection with her scientific creation. It seemed rushed and over-the-top, and while I do think that animals are capable of immense love and affection, I didn’t entirely buy Mary’s attachment to what she had put together and what they meant to each other. I adored Mary, who’s character takes inspiration from not one but three impressive women of the 19th C: Mary Shelley, Mary Anning (the self-taught palaeontologist who found the first Ichthyosaur fossil) and Mary Somerville (one of the first women admitted into the Royal Astronomical Society), and really enjoyed discovering just how much of their stories connected to our refreshingly bold and sharp-tongued protagonist—especially Mary Anning, who seemed to have to the most in common with our plesiosaur-obsessed MC. It’s set in 1851, at the height of the Victorian era’s fascination with all things dinosaur and follows Elizabeth (the great-niece of Victor Frankenstein) who (having spent the better part of her life being looked down on for being a woman interested in science and palaeontology) yearns to find scientific acclaim beyond the footnotes of other people’s research. But without any powerful connections or wealth, neither Mary or her husband stand a chance of ever succeeding.