Friday, December 28, 2012

ARC Review: The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke


The rightness or wrongness of Love


Title: The Mad Scientist’s Daughter
Author: Cassandra Rose Clarke
Publisher: Angry Robot / Strange Chemistry
Releases:7th February, 2013 
My ratings: 5 out of 5 stars.
 After reading book after book I have been in a bit of a haze lately. I have reading good books, average book and some I-cannot- stand-this books. I haven’t written a review in a long time. Call me lazy but I simply didn’t have the energy to type up my thoughts. Then I come across The Mad Scientist’s Daughter and words started tumbling out of my head trying to find a way out. I’m being over whelmed trying to share my feeling about this book.

 This may very well be on of my best reads this year. It suck me right in. To be honest I wasn’t very impressed with the cover. My usual reading goes more in the paranormal/ Urban Fantasy genre so I wasn’t expecting much. Boy! Am I glad I kept reading?

 The first chapter you are taken to the night when Cat, the five year old, first meets Finn, the android her father brings home. It is fascinating to see how she first imagines him to be ghost and slowly how his role in her life changed. The story is told between a long periods of time, roughly over 30 years. We see how Cat grows from a wild child to a high school teen to an adult with Finn by her side. Things changed, people changed, the weather changed and so did Cat and Finn’s role in her life. He started off being her tutor and slowly became the love of her life.

 What really struck me was how slowly a human could develop feeling for a robot. Maybe because she was home schooled and never interacted with children her age but Finn became such an important part of her life. Even when her parents try to send her to high school the damage has already been done. Cat never out right expressed her feelings for Finn but the reader could clearly feel her emotions and how deep rooted the feelings were.

 Cat was strange heroine. Honestly, she did not have any redeeming qualities but frankly I could not hate her. She was selfish, uncaring and cold. As her feeling for Finn grew the war inside her raged on and on for decades. Was it ok to romantically love a machine? This story was a journey of acceptance of a girl turning into a woman. She tried to go to parties, make friends and lead a, what she called a 'normal life.' But she simply could not connect with any humans. There was his shroud of perpetual sadness about her which permeated the lines of this story. The sadness would let you hate Cat. No matter how much she simply drifted alone in her life trying to find peace but it would always take her back to Finn.

 What I loved about this story was not once did the author not make it clear that Finn was a robot. He is compared to a computer, an oven even he himself called himself a machine yet other things pointed towards another direction. He was so different from the others. So while Cat was going though this myriad of emotions the reader was forced to think whether it is right or wrong. Well, I took the easy part and simply rooted for Cat and Finn. I mean how you can not. It was heart breaking for me. I shamefully say I cried a few times.

 Don’t go in this book trying to find too much depth about how machine/robots should be treated. This story is not about it. Yes, it does deal with a few issues but clearly it was not what the author wanted the reader to take back. It was a story of love, temptation, need, growing up, about friends and most important it was about never changing hopeless love. Does love conquer all? No, certainly not but yes, it changes you. Her parents were to blame for the way she was and her feelings for Finn but was it? The story was heart breaking and tragic yet it left you content that perhaps love is all you need.

 ARC provided by the Angry Robot via NetGalley



1 comments:

Unknown on December 31, 2012 at 2:43 AM said...

Very interinteresting, it's like Christina Ricci falling for Casper/Devon Sawsla.

Happy New Year!

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