{Put This One on Your TBR List}: Review of A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock Accompanied by Karen Wiesner's Original Artwork by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}:

Review of A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock

Accompanied by Karen Wiesner's Original Artwork

by Karen S. Wiesner 

  Beware spoilers! 

I was looking for something to read on my Libby library app, and A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock came up, no doubt because of my newfound love of gardening and horror literature. This 2024 Victorian gothic chiller was the author's first book. The basic story is two Victorian-age, quirky gentlemen live a cloistered existence in an equally eccentric botanical garden. Simon is a taxidermist who views his usually whimsical (i.e., not disturbing) craft as art. Gregor is a celebrated, though somewhat spurned, horticulturist whose greatest love is cultivating wildly exotic plants. His latest acquisition is a strange fungus he's convinced is capable of unprecedented intelligence. He's determined to make it his masterpiece. Throw in a spirited housemaid named Jennifer who's a bit of an oddity herself in the community they live, and readers are treated to a whole menagerie of curiosities to explore. Jennifer has recently lost the friend she loves, one she believes was murdered by her own father, though she has no way to prove it. 

This story began in a wonderfully witty, charming way that captured me instantly, especially when the story turned into a gardener's version of Frankenstein. Seriously, what more could you want? I was mesmerized with the wonderful characters and their irresistible setting. Jennifer was unexpectedly vibrant, not willing to be defined by those around her, and fiercely true to herself and her values. Simon and Gregor were at first alike only in that both displayed erratic artist temperaments, yet the author made them very unique…at least initially. 

The first half of this book was amazing. I enjoyed every word, all the unorthodox developments, the author's clever turns of phrase that had me laughing out loud from one page to the next. I wanted to include at least one or two of the best of those gems here but my library app took the ebook back too quickly. 

Despite such a winning start, the last half of the story, regrettably, became a confounding garble of twisted, choking inconsistencies that eventually threatened to wreck the foundation altogether. It got to the point where I couldn't tell which character was Gregor and which was Simon. They became as the same person and unrecognizable from their formerly established characters. I lost track of the story because the main characters abruptly were so muddied and odiously unlikable. It was as if the author himself forgot who was who in his literary madness. Not only did the story turn to something painfully unreadable but the situations the couple's bad choices entangled them in resembled an abyss that got deeper, darker, and far less amusing than I could tolerate. The characters committed horrible atrocities that were presented in a way that ultimately condoned their behavior. Similar to another "holobiont"* set of books I recently read and was faintly appalled by**, the degeneration of values and lack of respect for life (human and plant alike) depicted at the end of this story all but crumbled to incomprehensibility, leaving me cold and filled with regrets for what could have been a brilliant first novel. The initial half was so enjoyable and fun. While I wouldn't have called this outright horror, it had moments of dread that I relished in context with all the plant concepts. I'm not entirely certain if it was an inexperienced author that was to blame for the crimes committed in the writing of the second portion of this tome, or an editor who let far too many mistakes creep in that went unrevised--probably both of these in combination. A third alternative is that this is simply the unimaginable (to me), new way books are written, and I'm just too old to appreciate it. Sigh. 

*Various symbiotic organisms joined as an ecological unit--read more about this on Wikipedia if you're interested. 

**The Southern Reach Series by Jeff VanderMeer. 

Despite my regrets for what might have been, I must say, what a lovely cover. I adore it!  Bravo, Julia Lloyd! 

To go along with the theme of this review, here's a botanical art project I recently finished for my daughter's birthday.

"Autumn…Where Nature and Imagination Merge"

(rendered in coloring pencil)

© Karen Wiesner (all rights reserved)

 Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of 156 titles and 16 series. 

Visit Karen here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Blood and Roses

If you want to read a delightful novel that might be described as "Jane Austen meets Bram Stoker," published long before the more recent "mash-up" fad (e.g., books such as PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES), pick up BLOOD AND ROSES (1994) by Sharon Bainbridge. This author, a pen name for the writing team of Sharon Farber and Sharon Rose, actually sets the plot in the late Victorian era rather than the Regency, as evidenced by mentions of the American Civil War and the works of Charles Darwin. After the Gothic prologue in which a gullible village girl meets a vampire seducer by moonlight, however, the main action morphs into a comedy of manners almost worthy of Austen.

This novel could appropriately begin, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that an unmarried vampire in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife." Mrs. Portland, social-climbing wife of a rich merchant, is determined to marry her younger daughter Guenevere to the mysteriously reclusive Sir Geoffrey Utley. Elaine, Guenevere's sensible older sister, takes an instant dislike to Sir Geoffrey, who appears less like Bingley than Darcy, barely concealing his disdain for the local mothers pushing their daughters at him. Meanwhile, Elaine's cousin Violet, a doctor's daughter with up-to-date medical knowledge and a love of science, becomes acquainted with the progressive Dr. William Praisegood, who has come to High Grimmire to investigate an epidemic of "green sickness" (anemia) among the working-class girls. When a young lady drops dead of that same illness at a ball given by the Portlands, the suspense and horror aspects of the story shift into high gear. Dr. Praisegood explains vampirism as a contagious disease with which he and his physician ancestors have had long experience. Who is the master vampire preying on the girls, and even if he is found and destroyed, can any of the new undead he has created be redeemed from the compulsion to feed on unwilling victims?

While there's ample horror and pathos, the witty dialogue ensures that comic relief is never far away, yet without undercutting the terror of an unknown vampire stalking the village. Elaine's slightly ga-ga great-aunt, her nominal chaperone, matter-of-factly accepts the possible infestation of vampires as just another interesting episode in a lifetime that has seen much worse, such as the Napoleonic wars. She comes out with eccentric remarks at the most inopportune times. Violet reacts to a summary of Polidori's "The Vampyre" with the levelheaded and exasperated remark, "You mean the silly young twit lets an undead monster kill those near and dear to him because he gave his word under trying and falsified pretenses? He deserves to be in a madhouse!" I can't quote the most deliciously funny line in the entire book, because it gives away the main secret of the plot. (It's on page 268; if you decide to read the novel, you'll spot it.)

I guarantee this story will rivet your attention. Every time you're sure you've identified the villain, something else happens to cast doubt on your assumptions. The ending, dramatic but laced with humor, impressed me as totally satisfying. Aside from a few typos, the book seems to me practically perfect except for a glitch in the prologue that I didn't notice until my third or fourth reading. Maudie, the victim seduced by the vampire "lord," doesn't seem to recognize him in that scene, and there's no plausible reason why she wouldn't. The authors can be forgiven for misleading the reader in this minor way, though. Incidentally, don't trust the book's blurb. It's riddled with inaccuracies. The reference to Dracula and Van Helsing has nothing to do with this novel, which is set well before DRACULA, and Van Helsing is mentioned in the text only once in passing (as a young man). Nevertheless, BLOOD AND ROSES does expertly evoke the atmosphere of a classic vampire novel, but as filtered through the self-reflective lens of over a century of genre development.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Valentine Snark

The sending of Valentine's Day cards became a mass-market phenonmenon in the nineteenth century, especially after the introduction of postage stamps in 1840. In early decades, cards were often decorated with real ribbons and lace. Later, as they began to be mass-produced, paper lace came into use. Here are a few images of elaborate nineteenth-century valentines:

Vintage Valentine's Day Cards

ClickAmericana Victorian Valentines

We readily associate sentimental, romantic images of hearts, flowers, and Cupids with that era. Lesser known are the negative-message cards also popular among the Victorians, often downright mean missives called "vinegar valentines." Originally they were labeled "comic" valentines, a category that still exists today, but not quite so harsh. Nowadays we can find funny, sometimes sarcastic cards alongside the serious, sentimental ones, such as birthday cards with jokes about getting old, but we seldom see cards as openly insulting as some of the Victorian examples:

Victorian Vinegar Valentines

Here's a page of authentic cards in that category:

Vinegar Valentine Images

They're relatively hard to find, it's said, because people tended not to save them. No wonder! Hard to imagine who'd send acquaintances cards mocking their looks, personalities, and failures in love, yet apparently there seems to have been a substantial market for those products.

Like Victorian pornography, some of which was as hardcore as ours, vinegar valentines remind us that the popular image of Victorians as pure-minded, romantic, sentimental, and wholly devoted to family values is an incomplete picture of the realities of the era.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt