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woweewhoa's review against another edition
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Death, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Alcoholism, Slavery, and Medical content
darumachan's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Unsettling meditation on the relationships between humanity, nature, and science
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, and Colonisation
Moderate: Slavery
gasoline_allie's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Better and MUCH creepier than I expected. There are so many trigger warnings that apply and are worth looking into before reading, but I'm glad I went in mostly blind. The concept of exploration and experimentation without ethics remains relevant, as does the question of what it means to be human and how we relate to the natural world. I thought the different ways Prendick and Montgomery interacted with Moreau's creations and Moreau himself was subtly done and interesting.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Torture, and Violence
Moderate: Racism and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Minor: Alcoholism and Cannibalism
jaimemt_reads's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts
belovedsnail's review against another edition
challenging
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Very disturbing. I don’t know what to make of it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty and Animal death
ed_moore's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.75
“These seeming men and women about me are indeed men and women, men and women forever, perfectly reasonable creatures full of human desires and tender solicitude emancipated from instinct and are slaves of no fantastic law, being altogether distinct from the beast folk. Yet I shrink from them.”
Once again I wasn’t a huge lover of a book by HG Wells. His writing just doesn’t quite work for me. ‘The Island of Dr Moreau’ follows Edward Prendick who is shipwrecked on a remote tropical island used by a Victor Frankenstein-esque doctor who transforms animals into imitations of humans. It was quite similar to Mikhail Bulgakov’s ‘The heart of a dog’ in this sense yet Bulgakov did a much better job in exploring this. Wells’ sci-fi has undertones of racism and explicit themes of animal cruelty throughout, which Prendick is somewhat a figure exposing this but also his sympathy is very limited and often leads to violence. There are also traits of Wells’ writing which feature here as I have observed in others of his work, principally the fallback of saying “these creatures were indescribable to my human mind” to paraphrase and then proceeds to not convey to the reader what he is talking about, almost just because its a science fiction Wells uses that as a fallback for lazy writing. I can commend unlike others in this case that the characters were actually named, there were few of them so I had a good understanding of them and development was okay, good for Wells’ standard at least.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty
trin's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
Not Wells' best, and yet indubitably a classic. ("The house of pain!") Moreau's original methods of creation manage to be far creepier than anything later films have come up with -- cloning? Yawn. Unfortunately, there also manages to be a lot of casual racism/antisemitism, including several lines that had me saying "yikes!" and making the grimace emoji 😬 irl. It's not entirely clear how much of this is actually Wells and how much his -- clearly and intentionally -- flawed narrator, but it still takes the modern reader aback. Nevertheless, this remains a swift and effective piece of horror.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty and Animal death
Moderate: Racism and Antisemitism
terrortwilight's review against another edition
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty and Body horror
katenovah's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Confinement, Death, Gun violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Blood, Murder, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail