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aroaessidhe · 17 days

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2024 reads / storygraph

A Botanical Daughter

historical fantasy

a taxidermist and botanist who live in a greenhouse in a botanical garden, far away from the disapproval of Victorian London

when they receive a shipment of a strange sentient fungi, they cultivate it inside a corpse of a recently murdered girl - who was the best friend/lover of their new housekeeper

as she grows and expands her desires they have to deal with their feelings about the potential monster they’ve created

#A Botanical Daughter #aroaessidhe 2024 reads #man I really wanted to like this but I kinda had to force myself to finish it.#really not a fan of the writing style which is very emotionally distant and full of a lot of telling not showing #it could have gotten weird and atmospheric with the writing style! we could have gotten sentient fungi POV! but no.#The characters were flat. the conceptually weird/creepy/horror aspects were executed in the most boring way #the relationship between the men is something we’re told exists but…. I don’t feel it. I don’t like them as characters.#They’re not even interesting enough to hate - or like it could have gone in the direction of embracing the unhinged murder couple vibes #they flip flop between angry arguments and making up and I’m like what is the point of that?? Honestly I didn’t feel any emotional connecti #it kinda feels like it doesn’t know whether it’s whimsical quirky-cozy vibes or like properly gothic horror #it’s somewhere in between & fails at both. it maybe suffers from trying to play into the popularity of coziness #the closest to weird we get is plant lesbian sex scene but also I laughed out loud when I read the line ‘hungry for her loam’#like…..these men essentially create this person then cut her off from the world and her biological desires; control her autonomy/ability #to speak and the conclusion is <3 what a weird little family <3 and not she should #escape and kill them and/or make them grapple with the fact they are at fault for this potential ecological disaster let loose on the world #there’s also weird colonialist lines scattered throughout that don’t feel super interrogated…

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