Follows a famous band of animal hybrid boys as they are faced with solving a mystery.

This book was a good time, an easy engaging read. The majority of the book felt rather slow to me, even though I enjoyed uncovering the mystery while being fed clues along the way. The ending was such a hoot, but it made me wish that more of those elements like the magical realism were brought into the story earlier on, as I found that part highly enjoyable.

The beginning of this one took me a minute to get into, but then I was all-in. A strange riff on fame, music, murder -- a weird little book, exactly the kind of thing I hope for from a tordotcom novella. It made me want to read more of Daryl's work too!

This was just a delightful read, truly enjoyable. The structure, the mystery, the characters, the unfolding of the truth. Honestly I wish I could read it for the first time again.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story!! I am a 7th grade teacher so I obviously wouldn’t add it to my library, but as a personal read it was great. I love the take on the Island of Dr Moreau mixed with a boy band at the height of boy band fever. I went into this story blind, but dang that mystery got me!

This was a fun and thought-provoking read. A little bizarre, but in the best way possible. I loved the boy band twist on the existing story. Very clever

The Album of Dr. Moreau is a twisty novella from the gifted mind of Daryl Gregory. Released 18th May 2021 by Macmillan on their Tor Forge imprint, it's 176 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

I actually put off reading this one for a while (sorry about that) because of Mr. Gregory's history of straight-outta-nowhere psychological horror. I even avoided reading this one at bedtime despite the relatively short length because I didn't want his creepies living rent free in my subconscious. I needn't have worried. The powerhouse writing is here; it's a very very well written story, but without the gut-punch horror and creeping dread. The emotions hit me hard with this read. The H.G. Wells pastiche brings the pathos, there's sharp and wry humor (reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson and William Burroughs throwing fists in Billy Wilder's hotel suite), and grafted seamlessly into the mix is a credible locked room murder mystery featuring a wildly popular human/animal hybrid boy band whose skeezy manager/exploiter has turned up dead after a wild concert afterparty.

I really enjoyed it. It's very very weird and very very well written. The denouement is satisfying. The characters are sweetly bizarre (pangolins are, incidentally, my absolute favorite animals bar none), and well written and mostly believable. The science-fiction aspects were a bit over the top, but once readers get past the spliced sentient human animal hybrids, it's mostly smooth sailing.

Four and a half stars. Content warnings for drugs, sex, some gore, and rough language.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

The Album of Dr. Moreau is a really fun read. It's easy to just enjoy it for the boy band murder whodunit it is on the surface and this aspect of it is really well done. It's also got some deeper thinking behind it and comments on the nature of humanity, freedom, consciousness, and the privilege of wealth.

The Album of Dr. Moreau is witty, clever, and filled to bursting with animal puns. Daryl Gregory plays with structure and genre, using the scant pages he provides the reader deftly. He shows a deep understanding and appreciation of mysteries and detective stories, as well as boy bands (and puns -- really cannot overemphasize how many amazing puns are in this book). This book is little, but excellent, and provides the reader with a sometimes dark, always funny, little mystery that will keep you guessing. Plus, the fact that it is set in 2001 gives a little taste of nostalgia that hits just right.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tordotcom for the ARC!

Many pop supergroups are manufactured these days, but the WyldBoyZ were <i>genetically</i> engineered. The boyz are as adorable as the endangered animals they were hybridized with: cute ocelot, shy pangolin, randy bonobo, smart elephant, and quipping megabat. Tween girls are crazy for them. Pop stars are practically another species already, but the boyz take it to the next level.

When their manager (only 10% human, 90% scumbag) is torn to shreds in a Las Vegas hotel the night after WyldBoyZ’s very last performance, Detective Luce Delgado faces a ticking clock to solve the crime before her witnesses—and the killer—scatter.

OMG, SO many animal puns. (Delgado’s partner Banks is all about them, and I adore him for it.) The humor is sharp as an ocelot’s claws (though ironically, Bobby O is, uh, not the sharpest of the boyz). The characters all have a warmth and likability, including Delgado. I enjoyed the heck out of watching her interview all of the larger-than-life characters and put the truth together. We even get an exposition in the parlor scene that is pretty epic.

Gregory shows off by quoting T.S. Eliot’s Five Rules of Detective Fiction in the very beginning, a sure sign that he plans to break every one of them by the end. He pulls out plenty of nods to classic detective and science fiction, as well as pop culture, expertly and entertainingly deployed.

Received a free copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I sincerely think that The Album of Dr. Moreau is the most fun I've had while reading a novella in a long time. Quite possibly, ever. So thank you to both Daryl Gregory and Tor.com for making this highly entertaining read possible.

The year is 2001, and the WyldBoyZ are making what is quite possibly the last tour. However, that statement doesn't work as well when they've essentially been on tour their entire career. This is a band known for its loud songs, intense lyrics, and outstanding antics.

Oh yeah, and the fact that they are all genetically engineered human-animal hybrids. That probably doesn't hurt things either. Their producer is known as Dr. M, and their career path is about to change when he's found brutally murdered within his hotel room.

"I don't want to be the one to tell her," Matt said to Tusk. "Maybe we could send a card. 'Condolences on the Murder of Your Scumbag Husband.'"

I went into The Album of Dr. Moreau expecting a quick and entertaining read. What I got was so much more. This novella was an absolute delight to read, one that had lots of comedy, surprise twists, and a few heavier moments to balance it all out.

In short, it was perfect. There are several perspectives to help carry this narrative forward. Each of the WyldBoyZ gets a chance to share their thoughts (literally), starting with Bobby, the ocelot. Following him, we have Matt the megabat, Tim the Pangolin, Devin the bonobo, and Tusk the elephant, plus the detective that has to put this case into some semblance of order: Luce Delgado.

I actually love that each chapter had a different perspective. It helped to keep the mystery going while giving us a chance to know the different personalities that made up this very unusual band. Each boy is wildly (no pun intended) different, and that in itself left plenty of room for interest and a bit of humor.

The final twist was unexpected but actually ended up making quite a lot of sense, which I appreciate. This moment, along with several others hinted throughout, succeeded in breaking my heart, at least just a little bit—one more reason to love The Album of Dr. Moreau and everything it had to offer.

WyldzBoyZ is the top boy band in 2001. When their performance is over, they go to Dr. Moreau their manager/agent’s hotel suite in Las Vegas to party with their fans. In the morning, Dr. Moreau is dead. How did he die? His wife isn’t upset—just business like saying she was sleeping in one of the boyz room. The boy band men are genetically engineered human/animal hybrids. The band members say they are innocent but Bobbie, one of the men woke up with blood all over his clothes. He doesn’t know where it came from. The Detective Luce Delgado discovers that all the band members have a reason to want their manager dead. Who killed Dr. Moreau? It becomes more complicated for Det. Luce as she learns that the fans at the party were dressed in costumes to look like animals. Watching the hotel video seeing the animals leaving the suite just finds her hoping she can interview the fans attending the party. Will Det. Luce be able to find the murderer?

I loved how Det. Luce found it strange interviewing the boyz. She learns about their personalities and background. The book is short but there is so much happening that I was involved in the story from the first page. It is a crazy and entertaining novel.

It's 2001 and boy bands are all the rage. When a murder occurs, Detective Lucia Delgado, the "Celebrity Whisperer" must work through the many strong personalities in order to get to the bottom of the mystery.

As of writing this review, I have not read The Island of Dr. Moreau, but I intend to read the story sometime soon. I'd love to see the connections this and Island has.

The Album of Dr. Moreau was really a great time! It's a traditional locked-room mystery, add in some humor, a little bit of science fiction, and you have this book. I'm not a big mystery reader, but I can say I'll be looking up some more mysteries to read in the future. I really did enjoy trying to figure out who committed the murder. (I was wrong--but it's fine, I still enjoyed the ending!) The science fiction was also a special treat for me. I'm a big genetics fan, and while this type of story is 100% not possible, the way it was told was pretty accurate, I would say.

Even through the humor, there were definitely some emotional moments. For a novel under 200 pages, there were a lot of emotions expressed in a short period of time. I managed to read this book in just a few hours, and definitely needed a nap when I was finished.

This is my first read by Daryl Gregory, and I would love to get my hands on some of his other work, especially Spoonbenders.

Thank you to Net Galley, Tordotcom, and Daryl Gregory for this advanced review copy!

This novella combines three of my favorite things: murder mysteries, sci-fi (and I don't care if calling it that is "vulgar", <i>Matt</i>) and boy bands! Add a police detective with a fascinating history, literary snarkiness and huge doses of humor, and you've got a book that hits all of my reading sweet spots.

Las Vegas Police Detective Luce Delgado is called to the scene of the Matador hotel, where music producer Dr Maury Bendix has been found clawed to death in his bed, next to the bloodied and extremely drugged up form of one of his protegees, Bobby O, "the cute one" of the world's hottest boy band WyldBoyZ. As Bobby O is part ocelot, he's immediately considered prime suspect, tho it soon becomes clear that all five members of the WyldBoyZ -- genetically modified human-animal hybrids who fled a burning barge conducting secret scientific experiments in the middle of the ocean before achieving global superstardom -- had plenty of reason to want Dr M dead. Could the murderer have actually been Devin, "the romantic one", who was perhaps too close to Dr M's wife? Or Matt M, "the funny one", who was looking to leave the band to pursue academia? Surely it couldn't have been Tusk, "the smart one", or Tim, "the shy one"? Could the murderer really be, as Luce's pun-loving partner Detective Banks posits, "a rabid fan"?

Complicating matters is the fact that Luce's 9 year-old daughter, Melanie, is a megafan herself. But Melanie's expertise may be the key to cracking the case, and to saving the lives of even more people in the WyldBoyZ' charmed, endangered circle.

The Album Of Dr Moreau packs a lot of terrific cultural commentary into less then 200 pages, celebrating and critiquing its subjects in witty ways that lean into both thoughtfulness and humor. Matt really is the funny one -- I loled at at least two of his wisecracks, needing to put the book down as I just lost it laughing. The novella's length, however, is also its main drawback. This is such a smart story that deserves to be drawn out into a full-length novel, with a little more reflection and slightly less pressured pacing. I felt like the murder mystery went by too quickly, juddering forward in transitions that could have used a little more story padding to smooth it all out. The sci-fi aspects could also have been given a bit more meat: I'd still like to know the whole deal with Jorge, for example. Like, I get who he is but I'd like to know a bit more of how he became who he did. That said, I really appreciated all the writing on music and pop culture, which was treated here with both the reverence and ribaldry it deserved. I'll definitely be looking out for more of Daryl Gregory's work from here on in.

The Album Of Dr. Moreau by Daryl Gregory was published May 18 2021 by Tordotcom and is available from all good booksellers, including <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/15382/9781250782106">Bookshop!</a>

I was approved to receive an e-Galley ARC of The Album Of Dr. Moreau, authored by Daryl Gregory, from Tordotcom and NetGalley, with cover art by XXX, cover design by Christine Foltzer and edited by Jonathan Strahan. What follows below is my honest review, freely given.

I rated this novel 5 stars. Gregory’s novels always do double damage, there will be another story running aligned, or sometimes hidden beneath the introduced one. Often times his stories hit me emotionally; I’m that type of reader admittedly, no shame.

The title’s play on the original book’s title is what originally grabbed my eye on NetGalley, then I was so stoked to find Gregory had a new book coming out, I had to hit request. The chapters are labeled like a CD, but I decided against listing them out as I would for an anthology or collection; it’s part of a single story and I think it would be a type of spoiler. I really thought it was a nice touch.

The WyldBoyZ would be the boy band of the moment in this reality too, I know it. Our introductions to each member of the band, their personalities, I’m sold. I can see them standing, and talking people, most importantly; I can see them perform on stage. It’s wondrous.

But the story they try not to tell, the one that came before? That is the one that grabs your attention and has you nodding, yes this is a Gregory novel. This is where the pain will come from. And you want it, because it will be beautiful, even as it tears you to pieces. They will entwine, and both are filled with their fair share of shadows, and it is beautiful. There will be laughter. There will be tears. There is beauty.

Short, original novella structured around 14 tracks in an album. It took me a while to get into the narrative, but once I did, I appreciated it.

The Album of Dr. Monroe
By. Daryl Gregory
P. 176
Format: eArc
Rating: ***
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I received an e-arc from @Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
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I didn’t exactly know what I was getting myself into with The Album of Dr. Monroe. I saw the title and thought it would be interesting to read a retelling of H.G. Wells The Island of Dr. Monroe. I had never read anything else by Daryl Gregory.

Then I started reading. The novel itself is more of a novella at only 176 pages. Yet, it is a fully developed, abate weird story. Think of it as a cross between Daisy Jones and the Six and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The book is about a boy band. Except this band is full of hybrid animal humans. After a night of partying after their last night on tour they wake up to find that their manager has been killed. An FBI agent, a single mom of a soon to be famous singer of her own, is brought in to solve the case.

The plot is a bit ludicrous, it isn’t much of a mystery, but it is well written. I went and researched what else Daryl Gregory has written and will pick up more of his work in the future. This one was an interesting escape from the same old repetitive story, but that doesn’t make it any less weird. Also. . .the ending. . . I didn’t quite care for it. It seemed out of character for the FBI agent.

Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this sci-fi eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  So here be me honest musings . . .

I have really enjoyed Daryl Gregory's work in the past and tordotcom novellas are great so I was excited to get a copy of this.  I did not know the premise before reading this, but having been a fan of a boy band back in me young (stupider) days, I found this to be a hoot.

This story follows the aftermath of an end-of-tour party of WyldBoyZ whose teenage band members are animal-human hybrids.  Their manager is murdered and Detectives Luce has to solve the case.  But the fan base is rabid, the party was out of control, and the suspect list super long.  It doesn't help when the fans, I mean suspects, are dressed in full animal costumes!

Aye, the premise be silly but don't let that fool ye.  This is so wonderfully put together.  There are puns, lovely chapter titles, and the quirkiness that I love about the author's writing.  There is also subtle jabs at the ideas of personhood, fame, and greed.  The murder mystery's resolution was entertaining but the boy band shined.  I highly recommend this one.  I will continue to read Gregory's backlist and whatever he puts out next.  Arrrr!

So lastly . . .

Thank you tordotcom!

It’s not a surprise to say that this story ties back to The Island of Dr. Moreau, a classic mixture of SF and horror by H.G. Wells. The punch in the gut at the end is the WAY in which it reaches back and grabs the reader by the heart – and the throat.

But that’s all the way at the end. Along the way it’s pretty easy to lose sight of that past while being completely immersed in the book’s very wild and extremely woolly present.

And I’m not just talking about the WildBoyZ themselves – as wild and definitely woolly – or at least furry – as some of them are. I’m not even talking about their “rabid fans” who are, in their own ways, even stranger than the Boyz they follow.

Oh no, I’m talking about the world of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and boy bands. If you’ve ever wondered whether the members of boy bands are cloned instead of merely born and nipped and tucked and botoxed and trained. Or however else it might actually happen that may honestly be weirder than this story.

In the middle of all of the sheer WTF’ery of a boy band on tour, there’s a murder mystery. A real, honest-to-goodness police procedural in a case and a place where all of the police’s normal procedures have been kicked out a penthouse window because 1) the victim is the evil, grasping manager of the above mentioned boy band, and every single one of the WildBoyZ is a suspect; and 2) the murder happens in Las Vegas, which isn’t a place where real world rules apply anyway – even if those rules applied to the hottest band EVAR. Which they don’t.

It’s the police, especially Detectives Luce Delgado and her partner, who hold this story together, even as they attempt to hold the WildBoyZ in Sin City long enough to figure out whodunnit and how.

But it’s the why of the whole thing that kicks the reader in the teeth at the end.

Escape Rating A+: I haven’t read a mashup between SF and Mystery that was this much fun since Bimbos of the Death Sun, and that’s a very long time ago indeed. But where Bimbos uses SF, or rather an SF convention, as the setting for an otherwise traditional murder mystery so it can poke fun at the genre, The Album of Dr. Moreau is SF after all, just with a murder on top rather like a 200 proof cherry on top of a drugged and drunken sundae.

The SF is in the boyz themselves. However they came to exist – which isn’t revealed until the end – the kind of genetic manipulation required to blend animal and human DNA into a person with traits from both sides of that equation is science gone in a direction we haven’t managed yet. (And this is what this story takes from its progenitor. You don’t have to read The Island of Dr. Moreau to get into the Album. If you’re not familiar with the barebones of the older story, the summary in Wikipedia is more than enough to get a reader up to speed.)

So Dolly the cloned sheep carried out to the nth degree – who does get referred to – absolutely does science fiction make.

It also raises, begs, explores and twists the question of exactly what is required to consider someone human. Or self-aware and sentient and eligible for all the rights and responsibilities generally conferred thereunto. It’s a question we still seem to suck at answering – or rather that some people don’t like the answers that science makes clear.

On the one hand, this story is both amazingly fun and incredibly funny. It lampoons boy bands, fandom and fan culture and the cult of celebrity and what it takes to enter that rarefied atmosphere and maintain a place there. The humor is black and deadpan and spot on at every turn.

On the other, there’s the dark underbelly about youth and innocence and exploitation. And hidden below that cesspit, there are alphabet agencies and conspiracy theories. It’s mucky and murky all the way down, and all the laughs turn out to be gallows humor – sometimes complete with actual gallows.

But the question of whether anyone deserves to hang for the murder – well, that answer was both perfectly surprising and absolutely perfect in its fine application of justice.

I think that The Album of Dr. Moreau deserves to go platinum. I hope you’ll think so too.

This book is so weird… and I loved it.

In The Album of Dr. Moreau, we meet the WyldBoyZ — the world’s most adored boy band, who sing in perfect harmony, have killer dance moves, and have the physical appearance of very interesting animal/human mixes. These five pop stars are genetically engineered animal-human hybrids, and they’ve taken the world by storm.

Over the course of this short book, the BoyZ become embroiled in a murder investigation, and the mix of pop celebrity, murder mystery, and sci-fi classic callback is just amazingly fun and entertaining.

What I found most intriguing in THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (yes, note the play on the excellent H. G. Wells' THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU) was, not the "locked room" mystery (Who? How? Why? [Why Not?]) and not the Pop-Celebrity-Status, but the incredible feat of Genetic Engineering and Manipulation.  Throughout the novel I kept wanting to push back beyond the beginning and find out the real "How? Who? and especially WHY? WHY would you--whoever you are--genetically engineer THIS? Isn't this a violation of--yes, Nature--but also, of the Civil Rights of the human portion, and Animal Cruelty to the nonhuman portion? I mean, in the immortal words of "Lunchables" marketing,  "This is MIXED-UP!"

Give Daryl Gregory a lot of credit: I am NOT going to stop thinking about the scientific-philosophical-metaphysical-religious-spiritual-political-compassionate-futuristic aspects of this novel!!