The Workshop of Filthy Creation Is the Gothic Horror Dream I've Always Wanted!
“Like sharpened teeth, the truth of what von Frakken had been telling me slowly sunk in. Here was, indeed, the foul beating heart of his inheritance, this workshop of filthy creation.”
*High pitched screaming* I LOVED EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS BOOK! I need to somehow gather my thoughts and write a readable review, so bear with me here.
In 1879 a Professor returns to London with a mysterious guest, a young woman named Maria. She is strange looking, human yet inhuman at the same time, skin like marble. Professor Hobson has a strange story to tell his friends of being kidnapped by a mad scientist named von Frakken and finding a creature made out of organic material, the young woman named Maria. With the reality setting in of the power von Frakken has to literally create life out of nothing, Maria finds herself running for her life. Being chased by an underground scientific organization who wants her for parts, being hunted by her creator von Frakken, and now chased by the police for murders she didn’t commit - Maria has to figure out who to trust and where to turn.
Book Mood Board, all images originally from HERE
“She was done with humanity, its twisted morals and its hypocrisy. Done with it.”
This is a dream of gothic and slow burn horror that filled my heart with happiness. It reminds me of two movies specifically in mood and description; From Hell and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Obviously I won’t go into any spoilers, while this does have notes of Frankenstein, and at one point cleverly references the original novel, it does completely stand alone and provide a brand new adventure set in a similar world.
Here’s what I loved the most:
The scene setting was so stunningly visual that I found myself constantly highlighting and annotating passages. It was so consuming that sometimes when I looked up from my book I’d be confused as to where the London fog and gaslights had gone.
The characters were so cleverly built and thought out and felt incredibly real. What I admire the most is that this book is filled with a lot of bad guys, but is still readable. There’s such a fine line between writing a horrible character and making a character horrible to read. Gadz does this incredibly well. The villain in this book is so incredibly villainous that I was just in awe of what depths of evil he would get to while still enjoying every page. Von Frakken really needs to be up there with the villain greats in our literary history.
Maria, our heroine, is no Victorian wimp. Granted, she’s not entirely human, or so she feels, but watching her mind develop and learn to adapt in the miserable slums of London is a fascinating journey. She’s a bad ass without being overly obvious about it and when she bosses around men and tells people off, my heart was all a flutter. I may be in love with Maria….
The adventure! This is just a pure adventure story with twists and turns and epic fights and puzzle solving. The ending is incredibly well done and paced that I tore through the last 50 pages in 30 minutes. It felt similar to the epic battle at Reichenbach Falls between Sherlock and Moriarty in its scope and importance to the story. I mean, it just feels like an instant classic - we’ve got a seedy underground cult, suspicious doctors, a variety of gloomy locations, good vs evil, body horror, scientific experiments, a heroic Professor….what more could you need?!
I just loved everything about this book and these characters and the adventure they went on. I can only beg the author, Richard Gadz, to please write a mystery adventure series starring Maria so I don’t have to leave this world! Just Maria wandering around London, solving murders, telling off sexist men, and eating freshly baked bread.
Available on October 25th, I highly recommend you pick up a copy! The author, Richard Gadz, is the pen name of Simon Cheshire, this is his latest novel. A massive thank you to Deixis Press for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review. They sent a beautiful package with bookmarks and a handwritten note, it was greatly appreciated!
“Of course I remain skeptical, I’m a scientist.”
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