BOOK REVIEW: THE WORKSHOP OF FILTHY CREATION BY RICHARD GADZ

Book Review: The Workshop of Filthy Creation by Richard Gadz

2/2/2022

Book Review: The Workshop of Filthy Creation by Richard Gadz
A book review by Holley Cornetto

The Workshop of Filthy Creation is a historical horror fiction novel that pays homage to the genre’s roots. Set in London in the 1870s, this book provides a sense of history and atmosphere, making it a worthy tribute to Shelley’s masterpiece.

Wilhem von Frakken has discovered the means to create artificial regenerative human flesh. His creation is embodied in Maria, serving as this novel’s parallel of Frankenstein’s monster from the original. Maria is self-aware, at first not knowing the full extent of what she is – and is not. Like most women of the era, Maria is little more than a pawn, whose fate is not within her own power to control.

Like many classic works of genre fiction, this story explores what it means to be human. Is it self-awareness? A conscience? Is it a soul? What is the precise line at which a being can be considered human? Along with this larger philosophical conundrum, Gadz provides plenty of horror, mystery, and gore throughout the telling of the story.

Whether you enjoy more subdued Gothic horror, suspense, body horror rife with gore, or thought provoking ethical and moral dilemmas, this book has something for you. While I personally found the earlier chapters a little slow to start, the story did eventually pick up, and made the build up worth it. Gadz not only highlights questions about humanity, but questions about society, inequity, and exploitation. The highlight of the book, for this reader, was the beautifully detailed setting of Victorian London. Descriptions of homes, museums, hospitals, and people were rendered with painstaking attention to historical detail.

Recommended for fans of Frankenstein, Gothic horror, historical horror, and atmospheric novels with a distinct sense of time and place.

The Workshop of Filthy Creation
by Richard Gadz

"The Workshop of Filthy Creation is a remarkable book, visceral and philosophical in equal measure. The perfect combination of big ideas and a rattling good yarn. Hell of a read." - James Kinsley, author of Playtime's Over

In the autumn of 1879, an intelligent, artificially-created being—outwardly a young woman called Maria—arrives in London under the protection of biologist Professor George Hobson. Hobson gathers a few close friends and reveals her existence, explaining that she is the final result of a research programme undertaken by a dynasty of unethical scientists, the von Frakkens—all now dead.

Unknown to Hobson, one of his friends, Jabez Pell, is linked to an underground scientific organisation, the Promethean Society. Set up in the early 1800s, its aim is to conquer death by whatever means possible. Pell immediately recognises the potential that Maria's regenerative abilities can offer to the Prometheans – but after his attempt to kidnap her turns deadly, Maria goes on the run.

Maria finds herself at the heart of raging controversy: some want her jailed, some want her dead, and some want to peel the flesh from her bones. Worse, she is now hunted not only by members of the Prometheans but also by the police—and her creator Wilhelm von Frakken, who, as it turns out, is alive (in a sense).

Thrilling and evocative, fantastical and grotesque, The Workshop of Filthy Creation uses a Frankenstein-ian thread to stitch together elements of real scientific history with the darkest parts of Victorian London and speculation on the nature of human life.