Our Hideous Progeny: A thrilling Gothic Adventure

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Our Hideous Progeny follows Mary; a young woman with many surnames. Firstly Brown, secondly Sutherland, and thirdly (and most importantly), Frankenstein. The niece of Victor Frankenstein, she happens across a bundle of letters and notes left amongst the belongings of her late father; letters that speak of what happened to Victor, and what miraculously terrifying thing he was able to do, so many years before. 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. Our Hideous Progeny also so desperately tried to be feminist and anti-racism that at some point, I stopped seriously taking it as such. Sure, it critiqued the classism and elitism of academia, but there are only so many "oh-this-is-so-unfair-I-don't-understand-why-it-can't-be-changed-and-made-fair" you can shove down my throat before I start feeling as if I'm treated like an idiot. "Subtlety" is something this book would truly benefit from.

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. Plot: As someone who really wanted to like Frankenstein but just couldn’t get into the writing style, I appreciated the way the plot both took inspiration from the source material while adding a commentary all its own! Having the central story revolve around the great niece* of Frankenstein was so interesting, and a huge strength of this book. 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... 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.

C.E. McGill’s richly detailed and utterly compelling debut was a deliciously gothic and feminist exploration of ambition, obsession, betrayal and love that I couldn’t get enough of! There are villains in this story, but no heroes; heroines instead take their place, in the form of Mary, and her poorly, gentle sister-in-law Maisie. This book takes a look at the society and politics of the time; of the disparities between class, gender and race, and refuses to make apologies for the way things once were; instead giving us characters who question and rebel at the time, though who understand the limits of such action. Through Mary’s fight for acclaim and acceptance in the scientific world, McGill does an excellent job of showing the trials of women in the 19th century, particularly for women as intelligent and outspoken as Mary. The men sure do try to keep her down.

But the TLDR of this review is that I loved this book. I can already tell it's going to be one of my favourites for the year, and if this is what their debut novel looks like, then I cannot wait to see what C.E. McGill turns their mind to next.Absolutely fantastic news today: my debut novel, the Frankenstein-inspired paleontological gothic OUR HIDEOUS PROGENY, has been acquired by Kirsty Dunseath at Doubleday! Read the full press release here! Evocatively and compassionately, Our Hideous Progeny seeks a way to tell the stories of those whose tales cannot fit in one book, those poor creatures who remain lost or forgotten NEW YORKER I was less enamoured of her husband (or any of the male characters aside from Mr. Jamsetjee who was such a sweetheart) though the realism and accuracy to the contemporary attitudes of the day were spot on and really highlighted how remarkably strong Mary (and others like her) had to be to persevere in such a harsh, discriminatory environment.

McGill's prose is rich and atmospheric, perfectly capturing the eerie and foreboding tone of the Gothic tradition. The characters are complex and layered . . . Our Hideous Progeny is a masterful work of Gothic horror that will leave readers on the edge of their seat. GLAMOUR 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. A fantastic read: I felt everything about Mary, her simmering anger and her intellectual delight, so very clearly. FREYA MARSKE, author of THE LAST BINDING TRILOGY 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.

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But Mary, declared illegitimate by her family, and Henry, sort of disinherited from his, are in a continual struggle just to make ends meet. They're part of a great scientific circle of inventors and scientists - and yet they are not. However, things start to change when Mary learns who her distant great-uncle, Victor Frankenstein, was and what he accomplished. So at this point the story delves from real history (and real science) into the world of horror and science fiction. But it's a beautiful evolution - or de-evolution - in the hands of CE McGill, the writer. There is SO MUCH going on in this book. Mary's fascination with what she learns about Great Uncle Victor. Her relationship with her husband and her husband's sister. (Gorgeously written.) There's a villain - of course there is! And the whole atmosphere and landscape of rural England in the mid-1800's, along with the poverty and squalor in the great cities. And through it all marches Mary... 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. Our Hideous Progeny is a continuation of the Mary Shelley classic, Frankenstein. The year is 1853, and Victor Frankenstein’s great-niece, Mary Sutherland, and her husband, Henry, are desperate to break into the science of paleontology. But together, they have neither money nor good reputation – both of which they need for their academic peers to take them seriously.