The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

[psocoptera]

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, 2022 novel. I think I read Island of Doctor Moreau about 30 years ago, but I have no recollection now of what I thought about it at the time. Moreno-Garcia did some good work putting the whole concept into a historical context and considering how it interacts with racism and colonialism, but in the end I felt like there wasn't quite enough here. Spoilers: Like, so much of the second half is waiting for the inevitable payoff of Carlota wolfing out and doing something, but gosh it felt like Moreno-Garcia just kept us waiting and waiting for it. Which is a strategy, sure. But what if instead she had given it to us and then kept going and explored it further or done something unexpected with it, I don't know. I mean, it's always cool to say "let's do a twist on the Gothic, the girl is monstrous but also still the heroine", but, like, "the kyriarchy (the Lizaldes as patriarchy, racial hierarchy, class hierarchy, and ableist hierarchy) is the real monster" is not really new at this point. If sadly always still relevant. Also the whole Carlota/Montgomery thing really wasn't working for me and there was way too much of it.

(I suppose Carlota is a pretty common name, but I spent some of the first part of the book trying to remember whether that was the Scott O'Dell Gothic on the island. It wasn't, that was Spanish Smile, while Carlota is the historical about the girl in the battle of San Pasqual. If anyone else was going to be trying to remember that.)

Also I have apparently now finished with Hugo novels, so, another cut, some space, and then a ranking.

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The novels:

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)
The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi (Tor Books)
Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree (Tor Books)
Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom)
Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Books)
The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books)

All three of my nominees (Babel, Siren Queen, and Half-Built Garden) were so much better than anything on this list, grr. (Or Spear, or When the Angels Left the Old Country, or Golden Enclaves. Maybe I need to be better about nominating things into every category they might work in, instead of just the category where I want to see them?) Legends & Lattes, Nettle and Bone, and Nona the Ninth were the bottom half of my personal Nebula ranking, in that order (I'm not a Nebula voter, I was just having opinions). But maybe they're ahead of Kaiju, Daughter, and Spare Man, also in that order? Although also maybe Nona is actually better written than Nettle and Bone, which was not my favorite Vernon. Blah. I will confess to a certain temptation to noaward the whole thing, like, it's fine if Kuang (hypothetically) wanted to decline for Babel, but I can *also* decline to think we should give it to anyone else... hm...

(no??)
Legends & Lattes, Travis Baldree
Nettle and Bone, T. Kingfisher
Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal