But Mary, declared illegitimate by her family, and Henry, sort of disinherited from his, are in a continual struggle just to make ends meet. Inspired by his brilliance and daring, his great niece Mary Saville and her husband, Henry, are determined to follow in Victor’s scientific footsteps. But the crime is even more complicated than he imagined, and there are people determined to stop him uncovering the truth. We at Penguin Random House Australia acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the Traditional Custodians and the first storytellers of the lands on which we live and work.

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.It highlights the struggle for women to gain rightful credit in a society that favors the voices of men, especially in the fields of scientific discovery. And of course, many differentparts of the book only bring to light the higherbehaviouralstandards that were expected of women, as theywere expected to play the limited roles they assigned. Readers will revel in Mary’s personal and scientific discoveries and root for her to succeed in an unfair world. This is a lively reception of Frankenstein that takes inspiration from both Mary Shelley's life as well as her novel. Once they have successfully constructed their Creature, Henry's ambition soars, but Mary finds herself asking deeper, more important questions than she's ever confronted before.

She knows her great uncle disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the Arctic but she doesn't know why or how. The reason I’m not giving this a full 5 stars, is the far-fetched display of Mary’s connection with her scientific creation. McGill’s short fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine and Strange Constellations, and they are a two-time finalist for the Dell Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. Absolutely fantastic news today: my debut novel, the Frankenstein-inspired paleontological gothic OUR HIDEOUS PROGENY, has been acquired by Kirsty Dunseath at Doubleday! The only thing that Mary knows about her great uncle, Victor Frankenstein, is that he went missing in mysterious circumstances in the Arctic, other than that she knows nothing - well not yet anyway!

As Henry's desire for fame grows, Mary must decide how far she is willing to go to protect the Creature she has grown to love. But on the precipice of success, Mary begins to question the ethics and morality surrounding their creation and the love that she has developed for the creature. Lots of references to all the science which was just literally exploding at the time- through both trained academics and talented amateurs. Mary is smart, andfeisty, but she is desperate to escape the shackles of her low-birth and makes rather unwise choices, and lands up with ahusband whose talents lie inmediocrity, spite, and making even more foolish choices. From today's perspective, Mary's situation is almost pitiful, because she relies on herhusband making wise choices, and on him being reasonable enough to credit her for more than her illustrations for his scientific papers and journals.