Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'
The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie by Henry Herz, Bryan Thomas Schmidt
1 review
art_books_chemistry's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
First off, this is an anthology of fictional stories and poems that are only loosely related to each other through the historical facts of Marie Curie's (Marya Skłodoska's) life. This leads straight into my major gripe; the stories, although not connected, are also not in chronological order. Marya will be 13 in one story, then 15 in the next, and 14 again in the following. She'll have graduated school in one story, then attending it again in the subsequent one. Sometimes she'll be attending the Flying University and then in the next chapter be listening to her father discuss how to start the Flying University. I'm not sure why the editors chose such a haphazard organizational system but it made the anthology more disjointed than necessary to me.
I was also expecting a wider range of time to be represented. These stories primarily cover Marya's childhood from about age 10 to age 15. I feel like her older teenage and early adult years could have also offered material for this project and given it a more diverse story set. As it was, a lot of the stories felt a bit repetitive since they followed the same basic story concept but simply changed up what "science" experiment was being done.
Following up on the "science" experiments: I was disappointed in this aspect. I was expecting more science and instead ended up with Polish magic and folktales. Some of this is absolutely to be expected, however I thought it would be more about Marya disproving such things or relating them to actual science as opposed to some of what actually happened in the stories. I did enjoy the "science notes" that some of the authors put at the end of their contributions.
I don't specifically recommend this as a whole, however some of the stories were worthwhile, like the one that took place in the Flying University where a student's skin turned blue. I also liked the message of the quasi-Frankenstein retelling story as well.
I was also expecting a wider range of time to be represented. These stories primarily cover Marya's childhood from about age 10 to age 15. I feel like her older teenage and early adult years could have also offered material for this project and given it a more diverse story set. As it was, a lot of the stories felt a bit repetitive since they followed the same basic story concept but simply changed up what "science" experiment was being done.
Following up on the "science" experiments: I was disappointed in this aspect. I was expecting more science and instead ended up with Polish magic and folktales. Some of this is absolutely to be expected, however I thought it would be more about Marya disproving such things or relating them to actual science as opposed to some of what actually happened in the stories. I did enjoy the "science notes" that some of the authors put at the end of their contributions.
I don't specifically recommend this as a whole, however some of the stories were worthwhile, like the one that took place in the Flying University where a student's skin turned blue. I also liked the message of the quasi-Frankenstein retelling story as well.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Animal death, Child death, and Death of parent
Moderate: Blood, Injury/Injury detail, and Violence
Minor: Fire/Fire injury
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