This desperately needed editing down. I honestly felt like I could've lost about half the book and still not lost much narratively. Maybe a third. There are some cool ideas here and the rich historical and geographic background is really cool! But about halfway through I was really feeling like it was a slog.

This is inspired by the H.G. Wells novel "The Island of Doctor Moreau" which makes sense in a couple ways.
1. The original is 130 pages long, and this is over 300. The page bloat, even in a more complex retelling, is really noticeable. For the amount of plot, it feels almost like the book is being stretched well past what can be sustained.
2. H.G. Wells is in that interesting segment of old school speculative fiction/Sci fi where the science isn't really explored. It's not about the scientific discoveries or the lab work, etc., it's always about the stupid/unethical/whatever stuff that people use it for, to the point of kind of hand-waving away some of the scientific concepts or the reader's curiosity. It kind of feels like a "don't look behind the curtain" sort of situation that doesn't really gold up well with much thought put to it.
2a.Honestly, this book would have been far more interesting if we had been allowed into the lab to get more firsthand knowledge of the experiments. This book is definitely in the style of HG Wells in terms of talking about specific scientific discoveries or pseudo-science in my experience, though I have not read this particular story of his.
2b. Similar to the couple Wells stories I've read, the dispassionate tone in his work always made me wonder when the central conflict would start, and that's absolutely how I felt here. Not dispassionate narration at all, but at one point I paused, asking myself when the intro-feeling segment would end and get to the real conflict, and I was about 45-50% through the book. That's pretty far in! I definitely felt restless throughout the second half of the book.
2c. The book structure was really confusing? We had a section in 1871 that was essentially a prologue (so that makes sense to be separate), and then several "separate sections" that do not have significant time jumps or breaks and are all in 1877. One of them picks up about a second after the previous "section" ended. Really odd and confusing. Not including the prologue and epilogue, I think the book spans like, a couple months, and is all pretty much a continuous story or narrative continuing from previous chapters. I cannot figure out why the author bothered with the sections, it seems like a weirdly shoe-horned in detail.

With all that said, I did really enjoy the lush setting in place and time. Revolution was always nearby, dialogue and cultural customs seemed period-appropriate (I am not an expert!), and the remote geography gave it a nice feel, similar to the island of the original. Our main character is overall pretty good, although her guilt tripping herself eventually got irritating. I think that would have been assisted by editing some of the book down.

Having a central female character who is both strong/capable but also still situated in her time and place is a hard needle to thread, and I think the author did that pretty successfully. She doesn't feel anachronistic or like an empty vessel to me. She manages to critique the system around her without feeling like she would have been burned as a witch as soon as she opens her mouth in the late 1800s.

The audiobook reader is also very good, her accents are very fun to listen to - she skillfully alternates between a Mexican accent and a British English accent, while still authentically saying a lot of Spanish and Indigenous words. Definitely recommend the audiobook.

Overall, a cool idea of updating a story from 1895. Just wish the execution had been a little bit tighter.

It’s a good book, and it has a very gothicy mexican vibe. With monstrous creations and that whole thing of is it right to try and create something perfect or wrong to create creatures that are in pain and that wouldn’t normally be seen in nature… I liked some parts but I also wasn’t really able to connect with some of the characters it all felt a bit awkward to me and the story felt forced. Wasn’t a huge fan but also it’s not so bad that it has some redeeming qualities.