Daughter of Doctor Moreau

Silvia Moreno-Garcia re-imagines the story of H.G. Wells' Island of Doctor Moreau in the Yucatán peninsula and told from the perspective of his daughter. I honestly think Wells' original book is a clunky piece of fiction, so it was nice to see Moreno-Garcia craft a more appropriately complicated and well-written tale around the bold idea of a doctor who creates human-animal hybrids. I ended up like this book quite a bit, and I especially liked how Moreno-Garcia weaved in events like Mayan uprisings and political rivalries between Mexico and Great Britain as a backdrop and story points for this retelling of the classic tale.

This isn’t that bad a book by any means but I do think you need to want to read something from this genre to fully enjoy it and unfortunately that isn’t really me. I will say that it was well enough executed that I still finished it and mildly enjoyed it though. If I was more into magical realism and Gabriel García Márquez I’d have enjoyed it a lot more tho.

I tried. I got to page 70 and I skipped ahead a bunch but I’m just not feeling it. It seems like it’s vague political commentary with some Doctor Moreau elements, which should be cool. It falls really flat though. There isn’t enough stylistically to keep. E interested either. I’ve really enjoyed Moreno Garcias work in the past but this one feels like a dud. DNF.