Frankenstein

Sad boy lit with an uncomfortable amount of step-sister love.

I get that she was adopted but they still grew up together as siblings and that was more monstrous to me than any of the other man-monster vs. creature-monster shenanigans going on.

Despite my utter impatience with Frankenstein's whining and the weird sister thing, I low-key loved this book. There were moments that dragged (the creature's time in the hovel and everything between Scotland and Lake Como) but the gothic romantic visuals of lightning storms in the alps, sudden screams and flashes of yellow eyes, laboratories filled with flesh and bubbling bottles all the way to the thunderous cracking of ice deep beneath your feet were all enamouring.

The foils between God and Adam and Frankenstein and his monster, while heavy-handed at times, question the morality of the Christian god and the work remains way more philosophically political than at first glance. A novel about the relationship between a monster and his creator goes deeper into the morality of man, inherent good vs. evil, and how our treatment of 'the other' affects us just as much as it affects them. Ultimately the setting was beautiful, the moral discussion engaging, and the screams of horror sharp.

Knowing a little bit about the history of Mary Shelley herself and how a little creative writing competition between friends set her on the path to jumpstarting modern science fiction makes the work even better. A 19-yr-old girl was not to be out-shadowed by the literary greats of the time and instead created an icon.