The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter

By: Theodora Goss

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the 2018 Audie Award for Fantasy

Based on some of literature's horror and science fiction classics, this is the story of a remarkable group of women who come together to solve the mystery of a series of gruesome murders - and the bigger mystery of their own origins. 

Mary Jekyll, alone and penniless following her parents' deaths, is curious about the secrets of her father's mysterious past. One clue in particular hints that Edward Hyde, her father's former friend and a murderer, may be nearby, and there is a reward for information leading to his capture...a reward that would solve all of her immediate financial woes. 

But her hunt leads her to Hyde's daughter, Diana, a feral child left to be raised by nuns. With the assistance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Mary continues her search for the elusive Hyde and soon befriends more women, all of whom have been created through terrifying experimentation: Beatrice Rappaccini, Catherin Moreau, and Justine Frankenstein. 

When their investigations lead them to the discovery of a secret society of immoral and power-crazed scientists, the horrors of their past return. Now it is up to the monsters to finally triumph over the monstrous. 

©2017 Theodora Goss (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cute, erratic, sloppy but not without charm

What did you like best about The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter? What did you like least?

Strong female characters, love a good mystery.

What does Kate Reading bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

She does a good job trying to make each character distinctive, but gets confused as occasionally swaps accents.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Possibly

Any additional comments?

I love the concept, but the narrative was a bit annoying. I didn't mind the idea of borrowing creatures from other stories and weaving them into this tale but the Sherlock Holmes character was so poorly represented.

If you are going to use beloved characters with well established personalities and NOT completely reinvent, then be true and respectful of the source.

Weird Science

Mary Jekyll and Diana Hyde, daughters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, team up with daughters and creations of other mad scientists (like Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau) and, with the help of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, solve a series of Ripper-like murders. Theodora Goss's mash-up of Victorian horror literature is fun and thematically interesting -- until the last couple of hours, which drone on interminably toward no discernible end.

If you're a fan of the original source material -- Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, R.L. Stevenson's Jekyll & Hyde, H.G. Wells's Island of Dr. Moreau, Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter, and Conan Doyle's Holmes -- you will no doubt love this. If like me you've never read those books but are familiar enough with them from movies and other pop culture references, the great news is, now you never have to actually read them!

Some more good news: this modern treatment takes those very male-centric books (Mary Shelley's authorship notwithstanding) and turns them into a feminist manifesto. The daughters -- many considered monsters -- turn out to be smart, strong, independent women despite the ravages heaped upon them by the men who exploited them.

On the flip side is the casting of science as the villain. In a time when science denial is a serious hindrance to solving some of our more pressing problems, casting doubt on scientific inquiry is not the right message -- this particular group of scientists are wholly misguided and heinous, but the fear of science as a replacement for god is a debate that was settled long ago, we now need to be careful not to let science be devalued in the name of greed.

The ending here clearly augurs future entries in a series, which the author says will be a trilogy.

Slowly, her breathing slowed...

That phrase pretty much sums up the entire book.

This could a pleasant eight hours of Audible. Unfortunately, it will require 13 1/2 hours of your time to plow through. The author executed this lexical legerdemain by slipping in looonng expository narratives from several perspectives, relieved only by the various narrators arguing about the presentation of those tedious narratives.

Kate Reading was spot on with her narration, but unfortunately her considerable talents could not elevate this plodding prose.

Probably better as a physical book

I liked this concept and Kate Reading did a great job with all the voices but I had a hard time following the various narrators in the novel. It was a lot going on and if you aren’t paying rapt attention, you miss who is talking very easily. The story within a story got a bit muddled as well, especially in the beginning. Might be easier going if you read it rather than listen.

PLEASE TELL ME THIS WILL BE A SERIES!!!

Would you consider the audio edition of The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter to be better than the print version?

I did not read it, only listened.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter?

Justine's story

Which character – as performed by Kate Reading – was your favorite?

Honestly, all. I really enjoyed how the characters were pre-identified verses, "she said or he said"

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

NO SPOILERS! The last few chapters, when the women realize how unique they all were, that each one had individual value to bring to the whole.

Any additional comments?

THIS BETTER BE A SERIES! Even though most characters are female, men will enjoy this novel very much. SPOILER ALERT! No sex, no mushy love story just a fun adventure, not even so much as just from a woman's POV. It was a well told story. It really isn't light and breezy, you have to pay attention but not a hard difficult story to follow either. I thought it was a interesting and fun new twist to several classics.

The Strange Case of The Strange Case

Unfortunately I struggled to finish this novel. I purchased the audio book based upon the interestin premise and it started off decently enough . however as time went by it became apparent that the books pace slowed to a snail's pace and then finally towards the climax and lengthy denouement the book structure fell apart completely. The performance is decent but it was a stretch for the male voices. i just didn't care that much for any of the characters. Won't be reading the sequels

lovely unsuspenseful mystery

interesting style of writing - the heroines commenting on the story throughout was funny and relaxing

Clever use of Public Domain characters

Kate Reading is as professional as they come and Theodora Goss has created an interesting tale using the female characters from Great Gothic novels from the 19th century. It is a mystery that involves Holmes & Watson with the help of the daughters of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , along with others. Simply brilliant

Weak last chapters

Not sure where the editor went but must have been on vacation for the last few chapters. The novel basically ends dramatically with main mystery solved but then meanders on telling story of Justine and explaining life of ladies afterwards. Would have given higher rating if book had ended where should have.

Doesn't make a good audiobook

This is a "story within a story" novel where the characters are writing the book you're reading. As a consequence, they'd frequently interrupt the story to have little side discussions about the book and at times it could be very confusing as an audiobook because you couldn't tell if the dialogue was happening in the story or outside.

The story itself was only alright. Good concept, but very anticlimactic and predictable.

Very enjoyable

A clever conceit done really well. The author has built a Victorian London populated by monsters who aren't and men who are. But she doesn't disappear into her own cleverness and lose track of the story, unlike some other people who have done similar things (yes Kim Newman I'm looking at you). The story rips along quite well, but we get some good background and insight into the characters too.

The only point to note, especially apparent in Audio book form, is the jumping between 'now' and the story. It's a bit jarring at first but after a while becomes part of the flow and actually a fun way to tell a story.

Excellent

What if Jekyll and Hyde had children ? What if a Frankenstein, Dracula, joined forces with them....Ok Dracula is in the second volume but I am not good at reviewing things so bare with me … Strong women (plus one bolshy teenager) try to untangle an intricate web of lies and half truths. Flippin' loved this book. Excellent narrator too, she has a wide vocal range and each character is easily definable. My only, slight, wibble is the use of the word 'gotton' but that is a personal grrrrr !

Great!

A Marvellous mashup of several classic novels that sets them in the same universe but from the perspective of Dr Jekyl’s daughter (Mary) and the retinue of other woman she picks up as the plot rattles along. Really enjoyed it.

Narration was good. The interjections from the characters that interrupt the story can be annoying at times (I suspect they work better in the paper version) but flesh out the characters.

Started well, didn’t last till the end

At first I enjoyed this literary appropriation and witty twist to well known characters . Unfortunately as the story progressed it lost its initial playful note and grew overbearing with too many too hard thought out turns of action. Similar for the narrator- the tone became increasingly hysterical and rather unpleasant. I didn’t last till the end and returned the book.

Love it,

What a premise the daughters of famous monster/mad scientists.

great story and intriguing characters and a nice reinventing of more famous names (sherlock dracula) and the introduction of lesser know characters(the poisonous girl)

and who couldn't love Diana???

Thanks Theodora cant wait for the third installment!

A brilliant story not well suited to audiobook

Great story but the style has constant interruptions by secondary characters acting as narrators and narrative jumps between between the chatactera which is very off-putting in audiobook format. It might have worked better if this was an audio drama with multiple readers. The story works a lot better in written form.

Dick van Dyke meets Sherlock Holmes

Kate Reading does a decent job of performing this work. There were a couple of catches with English pronunciation and an East London lady who sounded like Eric Idle doing the new brain sketch. But it was pretty well read over all.

The difficulty was the lifeless writing. Sometimes the same adjective would appear in consecutive sentences. Which jarred.

The characters felt two dimensional. For example Doctor John Watson was criticised as being unfamiliar with poverty in London. Conan Doyle's Watson would have stiffly reminded the speaker that he had seen plenty of of blood, guts and abject poverty during his army service in India.

Street urchins and prostitutes were almost pantomime characters. East enders with hearts of gold. No real sense of desperation.

Dialogue felt stiff and stilted. Almost Dick Van Dyke.

Intresting adventure story

I enjoyed the story overall, but found the odd Americanisms (sidewalk, purse, skillet etc) quite jarring which pulled me out of Victorian England for a few moments and just seemed out of place. The story was intresting and compelling and I enjoyed it overall.

Rip roaring Victorian Girl Power

This is a real curate’s egg of a book.The premise is quite original; Mary Jekyll, daughter of Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde is our protagonist, a strong female character who overturns Victorian adventure story conventions of male heroes and soppy females, collecting an interesting alliance of equally strong and interesting women, most of whom were either created or ruined by their father figures. The story rattles along at a smart pace and keeps one listening, with inventive reimaginings of many Victorian works of fiction.
I would like to have given it 5 stars, but really struggled to disregard the American idioms and syntax which should have been ruthlessly edited from a work set so firmly in England. There is no excuse for using vocabulary such as “sidewalk”or “gotten”, and I sighed every time a character “looked out” a window instead of “looking out of” it.
I found that the conceit of the characters periodically interrupting the author added absolutely nothing to the book and it became more and more irritating.
Kate Reading portrayed the many and varied characters skilfully enough to allow me to overlook her constant mispronunciation of “puma” as “pooma” and her rather stilted delivery when not in character.
Overall,I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the story, enough to download the next two books to find out what happens next.

A pair of brilliant books, well performed

The Alchemists daughter, and its sequel achieve something that has been tried many times and it rarely works. The following text may be spoilers for people not use to the style.
[POSSIBLE SPOILER]
Simply put, think of all the great stories and characters created in the late victorian period. Now imagine a world where many of them exist together. Just how would Raffles face a Martian tripod? There aren't any Martians but I hope you get my point.