Review: A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock

Title: A Botanical Daughter

Author: Noah Medlock

Length: 337 Pages

Category: Gothic Fantasy, Gaslamp Fantasy

Rating: 4 Stars

At a Glance: A Botanical Daughter is not a fast-paced page-turner. In fact, the myriad botanical details made me feel a bit lost deep in the weeds at times (sorry), but as the story crept ever closer to its conclusion, I remained enchanted by the author’s imagination and his unique rendition of a happy ending.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: It is an unusual thing, to live in a botanical garden. But Simon and Gregor are an unusual pair of gentlemen. Hidden away in their glass sanctuary from the disapproving tattle of Victorian London, they are free to follow their own interests without interference. For Simon, this means long hours in the dark basement workshop, working his taxidermical art. Gregor’s business is exotic plants – lucrative, but harmless enough. Until his latest acquisition, a strange fungus which shows signs of intellect beyond any plant he’s seen, inspires him to attempt a masterwork: true intelligent life from plant matter.

Driven by the glory he’ll earn from the Royal Horticultural Society for such an achievement, Gregor ignores the flaws in his plan: that intelligence cannot be controlled; that plants cannot be reasoned with; and that the only way his plant-beast will flourish is if he uses a recently deceased corpse for the substrate.

The experiment – or Chloe, as she is named – outstrips even Gregor’s expectations, entangling their strange household. But as Gregor’s experiment flourishes, he wilts under the cost of keeping it hidden from jealous eyes. The mycelium grows apace in this sultry greenhouse. But who is cultivating whom?

Review: Noah Medlock has done something I didn’t expect in his debut novel, A Botanical Daughter: He wrote a story unlike anything I’ve read before. That isn’t to say the themes aren’t familiar. To paraphrase another fictional doctor, Gregor and Simon are scientists who were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should. They are the men who play at being gods and creationists, but it’s the means by which they amuse and challenge themselves that was new to me. This novel may be likened to Frankenstein, but it also gives readers an adventure in a botanical Wonderland where the macabre and monstrous muse.

Gregor and Simon become spontaneous resurrectionists, though Simon does so reluctantly, when Gregor acquires a rare fungal species that leads him to hypothesize it could be used to reanimate the dead. Having a relatively fresh corpse at hand becomes both the crux and the undercurrent of the story when ethics and edification collide. Through Gregor’s posturing and bloviating, and Simon’s timid acquiescence, they manage to create something weird and wonderous from the murder of a young woman. That they create CHLOE, a botanical daughter, ignites the conflict from which murder eventually thrives. Their housekeeper-cum-governess, Jennifer, plays a pivotal role in the story as well, when she becomes its heart and conscience.

Jennifer is CHLOE’s heroine and protector, her champion, mentor, as well as the proverbial wrench in the works as Gregor’s mind slips further into madness while Simon jumps heart-first into nurturing the creation he sees as not only a person but his and Gregor’s daughter. The root of the story is not only the moral responsibility of the creators owed to their creation but the ways in which love transcends and transforms, a common message in an uncommon and extraordinary setting.

A Botanical Daughter is not a fast-paced page-turner. In fact, the myriad botanical details made me feel a bit lost deep in the weeds at times (sorry), but as the story crept ever closer to its conclusion, I remained enchanted by the author’s imagination and his unique rendition of a happy ending.