There’s a version of this review that simply reads “What if Dr. Frankenstein made Jurassic Park?”
Such a review would not be… wrong, precisely. Before we’re even out of the short-but-haunting prologue, we know two things: the protagonist of this novel is a descendant of Victor Frankenstein (she’s his great-neice, to be exact), and that instead of a man, her Creature is described as a reptilian, primordial beast, brought to life through a mixture of medieval alchemy and Victorian science.
(For those who may be wondering, McGill chose to include the element of life-giving electricity, absent from Mary Shelley’s masterpiece novel but which was made iconic in James Whale’s equally-brilliant 1931 film.)
That was most of what I knew about Our Hideous Progeny, and it was enough to get me to tear into the book as soon as I could get my claws on it. Dr. Frankenstein brings a dinosaur back to life. What else do you need to know, except how soon can you get a copy of your own, right?
Like I said. That’s not an inaccurate description of the book… but it would be an unfair one. Because there is so, so much more going on inside Our Hideous Progeny than you might initially suspect. It is in that way (and many others) that this book is more than just a modern pastiche of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but a true and worthy companion to it. It is a gothic in the original sesne of the word: the narrator’s view of the world is at once romantic and unflinching; beauty and revulsion mix until they are almost indistinguishable, as do passion and obsession; the supernatural is irrefutably present, but it’s far from the most horrid thing the characters must face. In short, it is a far more successful, holistic regeneration of the dead than either book’s protagonists can manage to create.
If anything, Progeny amplifies many of the latent (not to say undead) elements of Mary Shelley’s work. There are numerous queer interpretations of Frankenstein out there, and while most of them make good arguments Our Hideous Progeny takes the subtext and places it in the book’s flickering, ghastly spotlight. The gender-nonbinary author, C.E. McGill, is queer themselves, and they have much to say about the nature of queer existence, particularly how it can both erase a person while at the same time painting a target on their back.
McGill’s description of their book’s Creature—with it’s reptilian skin, it’s snarling jaws and bloated body, it’s rubbery flippers—is a bit of understated genius. Some readers will react to the description with incredulity—that isn’t what Mesozoic animals really looked like!—and they’d be right to, but they’d be missing the point. Jurassic Park gave us Velociraptors that were too big, T-Rexes that hunted like bears instead of tigers, and not a single feather in sight,… all of which was based on paleontological theories and museum depictions of the 1990s. McGill, then, bases their Creature on Victorian artists’ depictions of these ancient animals: sometimes this art looks ridiculous and cartoonish, but sometimes it is high-octane nightmare fuel. McGill captures the look perfectly with their Creature, evoking a ghostly sense of lost history—both the ancient Earth of the dinosaurs, and the gaslit otherworld of the Victorian period—which, for all its lack of “realism,” is all too believable.
I can’t say enough good things about this book. It reads like a classic gothic and a modern thriller. Its romance is full of yearning and need, and its horror would make Guillermo Del Toro proud. It’s a science fiction novel that dares to place itself on a pedastal with the mother of all science fiction novels… and it measures up just fine. In some ways — and I can see the torches being lit and the pitchforks sharpened in the black-and-white village as I type this — it may even be better.
And, oh, also, did I mention this is a book where DR. FRANKENSTEIN BRINGS A DINOSAUR BACK TO LIFE?!
