Mad Scientist's Daughter, The (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
Default three star rating.The Good:-This book raises questions about the nature of humanity, and sentience, and robotics-I think this could be a very good book club book in terms of the discussion (and I read this for book club, so bonus)-I like the world itself. Even without a lot of specific detail, it's well drawn. And I think in this instance less is more, because the details we are given allows the reader to make some inferences, while giving some flexibility of interpretation. It also avoids the preachiness this sort of thing could result in given what I infer has happened.-It's an interesting concept, and I like parts of it.The Less good:-A lot of unlikeable characters. Look, it is easier for me to care about someone's story if I find that they have any kind of character trait to make me root for them. I'm not saying the main character is a bad person - she's not - and the story is well-plotted in the sense that everthing she does makes sense, and I can see why she does it, but I was not all that invested (the only thing she did that I was interested in was the weaving). And she was not the only unlikeable one.-I find the relationship unsettling, particularly in the first half of the book (probably the point, but doesn't make it a fun read).It wasn't a bad book, but I don't think I liked it (get why others do though). To be honest, if it hadn't been for the fact that I was reading it for book club and my hold at the library is expiring in two days, I'm not sure I'd have finished it. I read this book in the space of a day.What a strange, sad, gut-wrenching treatise on what it means to be "a person", to love. I found the post-apocalyptic society the book is set in believable and fleshed out in a wonderful way; there was no sense of the stream-lined society you often get when authors create facile facsimiles of such, but a certainty that there were "normal" things happening every day, in the background, that the protagonist had no idea of, and didn't need to know, or explain to the reader. In this world Kansas is a desert and humanoid androids possible, it is suggested that Australia is gone (amongst others), there are Montessori schools and mainstream highschools and homeschooled kids (witness nobody's serious surprise at Cat's having a tutor), people have personal computers and the internet and Mums with weirdly regressive gender roles (a jarring note).This is like Tanith Lee's Silver Metal Lover for grownups, without the histrionics, fatphobia and fantasy 'Grand-High-Queen' mother.
What do You think about Mad Scientist's Daughter, The (2013)?
Perfection. oh the feels. it's like the movie Her but on steroids.
—Joy
