The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter - Theodora Goss

The first thing you need to know about The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is how much fun reading it is – especially if you grew up on books like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells. Frankenstein was published in 1818, so Shelley may have been a little ahead of her time, but there is no doubt that Victorian society was fascinated by books like hers and the other two mentioned (published in 1886 and 1896, respectively). 

Two hundred years after the first appearance of Frankenstein’s monster, Theodora Goss has written a mashup novel that includes these three mad scientists and others like them. The men have formed a secret society, and they continue to experiment on living creatures (and dead ones) to see just what new kind of being they can create. Now, it seems that no one can stop them but their own daughters, most of whom themselves have been drastically altered by their own fathers into something no human was ever intended to be – oh, and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Let’s not forget those two. 

Theodora Goss

Other than Holmes and Watson, the main characters of the novel are Mary Jekyll, her sister Diana Hyde, Beatrice Rappaccini, Catherin Moreau, and Justine Frankenstein. One of them has a breath so poisonous that it kills anything that comes too close, one is a cross between a panther and a human, one has been reanimated and physically enhanced after having been hanged to death, one is a rebellious teen, and the other matches wits with Mr. Holmes with relative ease. At first, it is sheer necessity that forces the women team up in order to fight those who want so badly to return them to their fathers’ laboratories. But soon enough, something funny begins to happen: the women become a family of sisters more than capable of taking care of themselves. So that’s what they do. 

Kate Reading

The audiobook version of The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is read by Kate Reading (is that the perfect name for an audiobook narrator, or what?). Reading is a veteran of numerous audiobooks in the fantasy genre, such as Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, so she is probably already familiar to many fantasy fans. Her skill of using multiple accents and voice-variations to individualize so many main characters is exceptional, and adds to the fun. 

Bottom Line: Readers looking to escape the horrors of 2020 for a few hours will not go wrong by choosing Theodora Goss’s The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter as a temporary diversion.