#Our Hideous Progeny

[mayasynth]

My beautiful unhinged daughter, Mary Elizabeth Frankenstein <3 I know this was not at all how the scene actually went, but humour me

(Pssssst everyone please read Our Hideous Progeny, pleaseee 🙏)

[b-oredzoi]

Books I Read in 2023: Our Hideous Progeny by C.E McGill (@c-e-mcgill)

We had built here, in this half-ruined boat house on the edge of the Moray Firth, a temple to our own strange gods- to Chemistry and Anatomy and Electricity.

[aroaessidhe]

faves of 2023: historical sff/horror or historical fiction

The Misadventures of an Amateur Naturalist

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

Before The Devil Knows You’re Here

Our Hideous Progeny

Winter Tide

Sailing By Carina’s Star (ok this is the only non-sff one lol)

[phaedraismyusername]

Hi hello have you ever read Frankenstein? Do you have any love for gothic tales about grief, obsession, and love? Have you ever thought you might be a Mary Shelley girly at heart? What about dinosaurs, do you like dinosaurs??

If you even considered a yes to any of these questions then I'm begging you to read Our Hideous Progeny by C E McGill

[c-e-mcgill]

It's UK paperback day!

Hi all! Briefly breaking my self-imposed social media ban (it's Deadline City, over here :') ) to tell you that the paperback of Our Hideous Progeny is out!* 🥳

* If you're in the UK/Europe/commonwealth! Sorry, rest-of-the-world, you'll have to wait 'til May! 😅

Also, it's time for soooooome:

✨ Giveaways! ✨

(UK only) - My publisher is giving away copies of OHP, plus an ammonite-shaped lamp(?!!) (I want one too, now 😂) on Instagram - ends Feb 4th at midnight!

(UK only) - My lovely publicist Izzie also has 10 copies of OHP to give away - if you're a book reviewer or blogger, DM her about receiving a copy!

Open to everyone: I'll be doing a free online reading Feb 2nd at 12pm EST with six other authors as part of 'Strong Women, Strange Worlds,' a group which highlights the work of authors of marginalized genders in SFF. I'll be doing a giveaway at the end for one copy of OHP, plus a bookmark and sticker!

✨ ...and an eBook sale! ✨

If you're an eBook fan (and based in the UK - sorry again, rest-of-the-world 🥲) you can grab OHP this month on Kindle, Kobo, or Google Play for just £0.99! A steal, I say, a steal!!

That's all for now - happy February!

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

I finished Our Hideous Progeny today (pictured here with one of my wonky gingerbread dinosaurs, I thought it was fitting) by C. E. McGill (@c-e-mcgill) and my review is: aaaaaaa

Think a Frankenstein sequel but with dinosaurs and that's the most important thing you need to know. There's also a TRULY terrible husband (dump your loser husband and run away with his sister, Mary!! Do it!!) and loads of really juicy thoughts on the role society forces you to play when you're not one of the people on top.

I loved this, it was dark but also had such a strong sense of love and purpose and passion. Would highly recommend for fans of gothic sci-fi/fantasy, marvellous commentary on Victorian society that's still (somehow) relevant today, and sprinklings (well, more than sprinklings) of queerness.

Also: I spent the WHOLE of the end on the edge of my seat being TERRIBLY NERVOUS. I was very concerned there would be tears.

Go read it!!

[readingoals]

I cannot convey to you how much I loved this book.

I don't even know where to start. Frankenstein but with dinosaurs!!!

McGill did a spectacular job with this interpretation of a classic. It was really in keeping with the tone and themes of Shelley's original but then built on them to explore themes of prejudice, gender, and queer identity. The characters were nuanced and realistic (but oh my god i could throttle a couple of them), the story was compelling, and the historical detail made my heart sing.

This is definitely in the running for my favourite read of the year. It had a slightly slow start but once I was in I was all the way in and couldn't put it down. The author's note made me cry! Absolutely amazing, I cannot wait to read more from McGill because they're a phenomenal writer.

[libraryleopard]

obsessed with our hideous progeny secretly being a loch ness monster origin story

[vehicularmotorcycle]

Not me sobbing at 12am while reading the author's note after finished Our Hideous Progeny.

This book was so, so good. If you like Frankenstein or dinosaurs, or women or sci-fi, or the 1850s; if you support women's rights AND women's wrongs, please read this book.

[ofliterarynature]

SEPTEMBER 2023 WRAP UP

[ loved liked ok no thanks (reread) book club* DNF ]

The Anomaly | Not the Witch You Wed | A Pale Light In the Black | (My Volcano)* | Klara and the Sun | Our Hideous Progeny | (A Gathering of Shadows) | A Dangerous Collaboration | Empire of Sand | (A Darker Shade of Magic) | Scattered Showers | A Treacherous Curse | Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz | The Hanged Man | Magic Below Stairs | The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy | The City & The City | The Splinter in the Sky

* * * * *

Magic Below Stairs was a charming middle-grade spin off to the Cecelia & Kate series, I had a good time and would be more than happy to read more books in this world!

The Hanged Man was the second in the Tarot Sequence, and still great! Not perfect, but the characters are so fun and the plots are extremely intense, I loved reading this. The haunted ship was scarier than the actual haunted ship horror book I just read.

Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz…bad. You took this amazing set up and look what you did with it! You made it generic and boring and feeling outdated. Justice for the centuries-old, animated, sentient, sorcerous, gender-fluid puppet who deserved better (to be the main character, to start)

(Veronica Speedwell is of course, fun as always. I have unfortunately now hit the books with longer hold times and am very D: about it)

Scattered Showers was a very heartwarming collection! Perfectly (and maybe, best) suited for fans of the author’s novels. Perhaps a little one-note, but a good read. I love the cover design a lot :D

This is the first time I’ve reread the Shades of Magic books since I finished the series in 2018. I loved them dearly. But my tastes shifted dramatically between then and now… ADSOM is ok. A decently solid fantasy novel, but not one that’s delivering what I want these days. A Gathering of Shadows, however, is a hot mess. I already did some yelling about it but there’s really not a plot, the storyline seems forced, and as asexualbookbird put it, it’s really just Book 3: The Prequel. I don’t know if reading it for the first time would be better? Mostly I was bored and irritated and would have loved to quit.

Somebody help me out, was there hype for Empire of Sand? Because I feel like there was, and I was so let down. The world building was beautiful, but it felt like absolutely nothing happened for the entire middle of the book? And the romantic elements weren’t enough to tempt me, I’d have loved this if it had gone full political intrigue instead.

I’m not a Frankenstein person, but I had a great time with Our Hideous Progeny! I’m a sucker for historical fiction with smart female characters, even if I wanted to strangle a lot of the men, lol. I might have zoned out a bit during the denser paleontological bits, but I look forward to future work by the author.

Klara and the Sun is another one I don’t quite understand the love for, it just wasn’t for me.

My Volcano. YES. IT IS BACK AGAIN. FOR BOOKCLUB AGAIN EVEN. This is such a complicated book that only two of us managed to finish it for book club when we first read it last year. Now that we have some new recruits we decided to try it again (no luck alas). BUT I am still not over it, check out my tag for more yelling. Right now I’m trying to convince the group to *not* do a third read next year and maybe try one of the author’s other books (and the author followed me back on Twitter! I got irrationally excited lol)

I was a bit nervous going into A Pale Light in the Black, having had some flops from the person who rec’d this previously, but it was so fun! ‘Space Coast Guard’ is not a thing that would immediately leap to mind as something I’d be interested in, but this goes *hard* on the found family vibes and spends just as much time on the characters’ emotions as it does on the plot, in addition to being super queer! The plot is a little clunky being split in two different directions with the investigation and the military games, but I still had such a good time (and speaking from the future, book 2 does improve on that!)

When will I learn my lesson about contemporary romance? Regardless of the fact that the plot for Not the Witch You Wed could have been ripped from one of the many many Teen Wolf fics I’ve read and enjoyed, we did *not* get along. Sigh.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from The Anomaly, but I think it was something more? Probably because it was a translation? Idk, I don’t find the “are we just a simulation” discussion particularly compelling (and My Volcano deals with related topics in more interesting ways), and the rest couldn’t hold me. Really wish I’d DNF’d this one, but I pushed though in hope.

The actual DNF’s -

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy I wanted to like. I enjoy quirky world building, but it felt like a contemporary romance masquerading as a fantasy - accompanied by all those pesky cr tropes that annoy me. Most of the characters were irritating me as well, and I didn’t want to forgive Hart, even if I understand why he was being so awful, so I decided to quit before I worked myself up too far.

The City & The City had a cool concept, but after 25% I still wasn’t interested. I’d maybe try something else from Mieville, but this wasn’t for me.

The Splinter in the Sky is a book that probably looked fantastic as an outline. But when it came to filling it out and connecting the dots, well…it was lacking a lot. Readable, maybe not worth the effort, but I’d give the author another try on a future work.

[the-final-sentence]

'That I am.'

C. E. McGill, from Our Hideous Progeny

[b-oredzoi]

THEY'RE HERE!!!

THE LIBRARY COPIES HAVE ARRIVED !!!! 🥳

[aroaessidhe]

if I had a nickel for every 2023 release about a queer female scientist creating and caring for dinosaurs etc etc

[atendencytotangle]

My Favorite Books I Read in 2023 (In No Particular Order)

Check out these books that I loved reading during 2023

In previous years, I’ve limited my favorite books read in a year posts to ten. This year, I decided not to limit myself because I read so many books I absolutely adored in 2023 and I just couldn’t pare them down to ten. As always, not all of these books were published in 2023, but I read all 61 of them between 1st January and 31st December 2023. These were a mixture of fiction and non-fiction,…

[c-e-mcgill]

On this day, May the Fourth:

Jonathan Harker accepts a crucifix from an ominous villager

Fans celebrate Star Wars Day

My book comes out, holy CRAP

If you haven't heard my yelling over the past few months, I have a book now!! It's called Our Hideous Progeny, and it's an adult historical SFF about Victor Frankenstein's great niece, a paleontologist in 1850s London, who rediscovers Victor's old notes and decides to invent a hot new kind of paleontological crime against God.

If you:

think Victor Frankenstein should have been a better dad :/

support 👏 feral 👏 women's 👏 rights

think there should be more opportunities for WOMEN in mad science #feminism

appreciate the exquisite homoerotic tension of two Victorian ladies just barely brushing hands

Then OHP might be for you!!

Available now wherever books are sold, or at your local library if you yell at them to buy it for you! 🖤🧡🖤

[wildereader]

After a while of reading books that were “just okay” and fearing that my love for reading was fading (as I always fear whenever I’ve hit a run of “just okay” books), I’ve finally found something to ignite that spark of excitement in me once again: Our Hideous Progeny by C. E. McGill!

When Mary Sutherland, the great-niece of Victor Frankenstein, discovers the writings that detail the unbelievable results of his experiments into bringing his Creature to life, she takes it upon herself to recreate his discovery with her own passion — prehistoric rather than human life.

This book combines three of my most favorite things in the world:

19th century English literature retellings

Angry women

Sapphics

So of course I was excited to read it. However, I must admit, I was also quite skeptical. All three of those ingredients in one book? What if it was too good to be true? What if I was let down by the reality of the novel not living up to my hopes for it?

(Forgive the dramatics. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Florence Howard while reading along with my physical copy and I’m still thinking in a British accent, just so you have context for where my brain is right now)

But reader, I was not disappointed in the least. Within the first few pages, McGill’s beautiful prose had me in its clutches, and once they introduced their wonderful cast of characters, I knew I was going to adore this novel

Our main character, Mary, felt so real — the main reason I loved this book was that her voice, demanding respect and acknowledgement not only for her scientific knowledge and discoveries, but for herself in a society controlled by men, did not fall into the trap I’ve seen in so many historical fiction novels (or movies or tv shows) recently — the trap I so eloquently think of as “This is a historical fiction novel that was very clearly written in the 21st century for a 21st century audience (but in an annoying way).” Basically, nothing about Mary’s frustrations and the way she dealt with them felt like McGill was pandering to modern readers who, for very good reasons, want strong, capable female characters in their historical fiction. Mary wasn’t “turning to wink at the camera” whenever she stood up for herself or the other people she cared for who were dismissed or belittled because they weren’t White Men In British Society. She wasn’t just a 21st century character that got time-warped into the 1800s, and I loved that about her

I’m assuming that a lot of that is thanks to the amount of research McGill described in their author’s note at the end of the book. I’ve seen a lot of love on here for the author’s note when I took a look to see if there were any other opinions on the novel here, and I must agree—and thank you, C. E. McGill, for writing this novel for all of us “monsters,” as you/Ms. Shelley put it :)