Book Impressions: The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke

I admit: I was really drawn to this book because of the cover. The blurb, too, but mostly the cover. There was just something so beautifully melancholy about it.

The Mad Scientist's Daughter

Cassandra Rose Clarke

****

“Cat, this is Finn. He’s going to be your tutor.”

Finn looks and acts human, though he has no desire to be. He was programmed to assist his owners, and performs his duties to perfection. A billion-dollar construct, his primary task now is to tutor Cat. As she grows into a beautiful young woman, Finn is her guardian, her constant companion… and more.

But when the government grants rights to the ever-increasing robot population, however, Finn struggles to find his place in the world.

This is one of those four and a half star books, really. It's not quite five though, hence the four.

I found it difficult to find the words for a Goodreads comment when I read the book, and to be honest, I still really cannot; suffice it to say that I cried, and then I cried some more, and I don't actually cry that often at books. And I cannot say for certain whether it was because the book was so good, or whether it was because it was a book that resonated with me for my own reasons. Either way, it seemed tailor-made for me in many ways (and not so much in other ways, but even those ended up working for me).

Comparisons with Tanith Lee's The Silver Metal Lover are probably inevitable, at least by anyone who has read both - there were just enough similarities in this human-girl-falls-in-love-with-android-man tale to bring it to mind and to justify drawing some parallels. It's a very different story in every way, though, both in the writing style and in the plot, and The Mad Scientist's Daughter stands just fine on its own.

I am in two minds about the episodic nature of this book. On the one hand, I'm not sure it was always a good thing, leaving gaps of many years between chapters, as this did leave Cat, the protagonist, a little distant; on the other hand, I think the style (and the distance) actually worked in its favour at times. In any case, I think it did work for me.