The Mad Scientist’s Daughter – Cassandra Rose Clarke

Release date: January 29th, 2013
Publisher: Angry Robot
Age Group: Adult
Pages: 400
Format: e-book
Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

“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 is now 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, and in Cat’s heart.

Review:

I have to admit that I expected a completely different story when I requested this book on NetGalley. I knew that it was a romantic story and that androids played a big rol in it, but nothing could have prepared me for this tragic, sad story.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved it. I absolutely adored it. ‘The Mad Scientist’s Daughter’ is one of the best book I’ve read so far this year. It has a special quality and a distinctive, very emotional atmosphere.

Cat grows up as the daughter of a scientist that works in the development of androids. When she is really young her dad brings home the android Finn, who will serve as her tutor. We follow Cat’s story from when she is young ‘till she is all grown up. We get to see how she grows up, first being sheltered at home, with Finn as her tutor and later when she goes to school and has to deal with the reaction of the kids there on how she has been living so far.

In your life you’re faced with a lot of different choices and making the right choices isn’t always that easy. Everyone has known regret about the road they did or didn’t chose. Cat is someone that makes the wrong decisions over and over again. She doesn’t want to come to terms with what she feels in her heart and what she really wants, so she settles for what other expect from her and makes her choices based on that. Due to this, Cat spends the most of the story being really unhappy, feeling miserable and not knowing which way she has to go next. She doesn’t take matters into her own hands ‘till the end of the book, when she finally begins to want to make something of her life. A life that she wants and not a life that everyone expects her to live.

The relationship between Cat and Finn is immensely complicated. Finn is an android and a unique one at that. There has never been made an android that looks and acts and feels so much like human as him. The androids and their rights in society are also a central theme in this book and serves as some sort of thread through Cat’s story. Because she has grown up with Finn by her side she has a totally different view of the androids then the common population, but she still lets herself get influenced by what other think about the subject. This is one of the reasons why she makes so many bad decisions, that aren’t really ‘her’.

Cat’s relationship with her father was another beautiful storyline in the book. The crazy scientist who spends more time in his lab in the basement than with his daughter. Cat misses that father figure for a big part of the story, but she ultimately does find a deeper connection with hem later on. I can guarantee you that this creates some really moving scenes.

The writing is wonderful and pulls you in completely. I just couldn’t stop reading this book, I finished it in a few hours. The author knows just how to bring across all the different emotions in this book, she can really make you feel all of them, as if you were right in the story yourself.

‘The Mad Scientist’s Daughter’ is a hauntingly beautiful book chock-full of emotion. It even made me cry on certain occasions, that’s how hard I was drawn into this story, how deeply I felt for these characters. There aren’t a lot of books that can achieve that with me, which made me love this book even more.
I want to thank Angry Robot again for giving me the opportunity to read this book. I’d requested it on NetGalley just before it got archived, which is why I was too late to download it. But Caroline from Angry Robot was so nice as to send me a copy anyway, so thank you!
This is a book that I’ll not easily forget.