The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Del Rey (Hardcover – July 2022) (Paperback – April 11, 2023)
320 pages; $16.60 hardcover; $18 paperback
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Horror icon Vincent Price once said, “Science is frighteningly impersonal.”
What if the scientist’s work becomes his family, his children, in a way? Some argue this is evolution, a matrimony of a creator and his work. Others argue ethics.
But in The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s reimagination of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, Carlota, the doctor’s only daughter, lives in a static and balanced world in the jungles of Yucatan alongside the human-animal hybrids. She is happy to assist her father with his research and befriends most hybrids, but despite the idyllic scope Moreno-Garcia introduces, there’s a lingering dread. Dr. Moreau punishes the hybrids for “losing control,” yet Carola believes her father would never truly harm anyone. He is reclusive and sometimes spends days mourning a lost love. This emotional side, however, is kept behind closed doors and never relayed to others.Continue Reading
