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The Destroyer
A mother-daughter mad scientist story, Tara Isabella Burton's THE DESTROYER asks how far we'll go to secure our own legacies--and how far we'll run to escape them. In a futuristic, fascistic Rome, a brilliant, unstable scientist proves that she can transcend the human body's limitations. The test subject? Her own daughter.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
18 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 20, 2016
3 people are currently reading
405 people want to read
About the author
Tara Isabella Burton
22 books720 followersTara Isabella Burton has followed a female hermit into the remote Caucasus, gotten love amulets from Turkish Islamic shamans, and held signs with the street preachers of Las Vegas.
Her work on religion, culture, and place can be found at National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera, The Economist's 1843, Aeon, The BBC, The Atlantic, The American Interest, Salon, The New Statesman, The Telegraph, and more. Her fiction has appeared at The New Yorker's Daily Shouts, Great Jones Street, Tor.com, PANK, Shimmer, and other places. She has received The Spectator's 2012 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and a 2016 Lowell Thomas Award.
Her first novel, Social Creature, is forthcoming from Doubleday (US) and Bloomsbury/Raven (UK) in June 2018, and will be translated into nine more languages, including Italian, French, and Russian. She is also working on a non-fiction book about new religious and "replacement religion" movements, Strange Rites: Cults and Subcultures After the Death of God, to be published by Public Affairs in 2019.
Tara recently completed a doctorate in theology as a Clarendon Scholar at Trinity College, Oxford. She is currently a staff writer on the religion beat at Vox.
Her work on religion, culture, and place can be found at National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera, The Economist's 1843, Aeon, The BBC, The Atlantic, The American Interest, Salon, The New Statesman, The Telegraph, and more. Her fiction has appeared at The New Yorker's Daily Shouts, Great Jones Street, Tor.com, PANK, Shimmer, and other places. She has received The Spectator's 2012 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and a 2016 Lowell Thomas Award.
Her first novel, Social Creature, is forthcoming from Doubleday (US) and Bloomsbury/Raven (UK) in June 2018, and will be translated into nine more languages, including Italian, French, and Russian. She is also working on a non-fiction book about new religious and "replacement religion" movements, Strange Rites: Cults and Subcultures After the Death of God, to be published by Public Affairs in 2019.
Tara recently completed a doctorate in theology as a Clarendon Scholar at Trinity College, Oxford. She is currently a staff writer on the religion beat at Vox.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews
June 18, 2018
My eyes were her eyes. My lips were her lips and my shoulders, too, were hers, and so the world was geometrically composed, and everything I ever was or would become was threaded in me already, and manifest in her.
this is helicopter parenting with a SF edge; where cloning/parthenogenesis enables a mother's micro-meddling with her daughter by way of her physicality; using her own body as a template to create new life, picking away at the unsatisfactory bits, building new ones, reshaping her daughter into an idealized version of herself, of the idea of a woman, extending the borders of human potential with this living proof of her genius, manipulating her daughter physically and emotionally all for the glory of societal and political recognition.
"You’re mine—and only mine. Nobody else knows how to make you.”
it's also an alt-history story about the roman empire, ambition, narcissism, madness, and - as the title foreshadows, destruction. a very ambitious and well-executed tor short.
read it for yourself here:
https://www.tor.com/2016/04/20/the-de...
come to my blog!
September 17, 2024
3.5 stars
short review for busy readers:
This unusual short story is a mash-up of a mad scientist tale and an examination of politics vs patronage in ancient Rome.
A brilliant, but megalomaniac, scientist mother alters her daughter to become the ultimate showcase of her inventive abilities: artificial limbs, cameras in the eyes, an epidermis oblivious to pain.
The mother wants nothing more than to be the sole woman to gain Caesar's approval and patronage, but when she gets it, it's not enough. She has to impress and be worshipped by even bigger and more important men. When she realises that her daughter ultimately can't aid her in her quest for fame and recognition any longer and her use is over...
A fascinating SFF look at ambition and the use/grooming of children as advertisements and reflections of a parent's glory.
short review for busy readers:
This unusual short story is a mash-up of a mad scientist tale and an examination of politics vs patronage in ancient Rome.
A brilliant, but megalomaniac, scientist mother alters her daughter to become the ultimate showcase of her inventive abilities: artificial limbs, cameras in the eyes, an epidermis oblivious to pain.
The mother wants nothing more than to be the sole woman to gain Caesar's approval and patronage, but when she gets it, it's not enough. She has to impress and be worshipped by even bigger and more important men. When she realises that her daughter ultimately can't aid her in her quest for fame and recognition any longer and her use is over...
A fascinating SFF look at ambition and the use/grooming of children as advertisements and reflections of a parent's glory.
February 22, 2024
In a futuristic Rome, a megalomanic inventor creates a clone of herself and raises her as a daughter. But as her daughter ages she manipulates her physically and utilizes emotional blackmail in hopes of securing a legacy from Cesar and the scientific community. As she begins to lose control of her daughter, she reacts angrily and uses her warped genius to try an experiment that ends in catastrophe. A sad commentary on how a parent tries to live their life through the next generation, in an extreme way. Listened to this story through the LeVar Burton Reads podcast.
October 6, 2018
This was a bit of a weird short story. Some of it worked for me and some of it did not. The big drawback was that I never really managed to get emotionally invested with either of the two characters.
The setting of the story was also a little weird. Original in feel as it was sort of an alternate history sci-fi Rome. Think ancient Rome in the future! It was definitely fresh in feel but still never quite worked for me.
This was the tale of a genius mother who pushes her daughter to become the perfect legacy to her greatness. It was quite a twisted tale and that best bit of the story was definitely the disturbed mother/daughter relationship. A few interesting themes were explored in this one but the one that resonated most with me was the highlighting of the fact that familial or social pressure can be a dangerous thing!
When I woke, she was holding a hand that now belonged to me—though I did not feel it—and stroking my forehead with the back of her hand.
“You’re so lovely,” she said, and took me in her arms.
I loved how a lot of the pressure was shown through emotional blackmail. A reminder that social pressure comes in many subtle forms.
“All idiots,” she told me once. “They’d have slurped slop from a trough if they thought I’d invented it.”
The mother might have been a total megalomaniac but I did enjoy how she cut to the nature of fame so quickly.
The ending never quite worked for me but I did think this was an OK read on the whole.
Rating: 2.5 stars.
The setting of the story was also a little weird. Original in feel as it was sort of an alternate history sci-fi Rome. Think ancient Rome in the future! It was definitely fresh in feel but still never quite worked for me.
This was the tale of a genius mother who pushes her daughter to become the perfect legacy to her greatness. It was quite a twisted tale and that best bit of the story was definitely the disturbed mother/daughter relationship. A few interesting themes were explored in this one but the one that resonated most with me was the highlighting of the fact that familial or social pressure can be a dangerous thing!
When I woke, she was holding a hand that now belonged to me—though I did not feel it—and stroking my forehead with the back of her hand.
“You’re so lovely,” she said, and took me in her arms.
I loved how a lot of the pressure was shown through emotional blackmail. A reminder that social pressure comes in many subtle forms.
“All idiots,” she told me once. “They’d have slurped slop from a trough if they thought I’d invented it.”
The mother might have been a total megalomaniac but I did enjoy how she cut to the nature of fame so quickly.
The ending never quite worked for me but I did think this was an OK read on the whole.
Rating: 2.5 stars.
February 1, 2023
ship of theseus, but make it mommy issues. i read this twooo (?) weeks ago but it still lives rent-free in my mind. the setting is underutilized (I have a low tolerance for sci-fi Rome settings anyways, they're very boring to me) but Burton is SO good at prose that makes my brain spark. and the last paragraph. my god. can I get a sad slow clap for being created, destroyed and reforged by your mother? no? alright fine but what if I said this is free on tordotcom
January 16, 2019
This is a tough one for me to score and review. As with the previous tales in the collection, the quality of the writing and construction show that these stories are indeed Some of the best. Here we have have a story told from the POV of the daughter of a scientist - born from self-cloning, and then pressured into being constantly enhanced into something more than human. Her mother is clearly brilliant, driven and insane and this leads to my issue with the piece; I loathe mad-scientist stories. I grew up on pulp and b-movie narrative where the world was destroyed by over-reaching, over-ambitious, arrogant or just plain evil and see the erosion in expertise this, in part, has lead to. It is a theme that has become part of our culture, repeated endlessly in lazy articles and online arguments. In reality, it is not science and scientists that cause the problems, nor even war and generals, but politics and politicians misusing the tools provided to them.
Now, I know that many of the great "destruction by science" tales are not about arrogant scientists at all, or barely so - the progenitor of the genre, Frankenstein, is misread as such, and is a deeper story about a search for meaning and a creator - but just reading that trope tends to set my teeth on edge.
However, that is my reaction to that aspect of the story and is, perhaps, rather unfair. Because this is a fabulous piece of writing. Burton suggests the world as a backdrop - it is in Rome, including the great structures such as the Colosseum and the Senate on the Capitoline Hill, ruled over by Caesar. Is this scientist a witch or an alchemist? But we get reference to other cities that were not contemporaries of classical Rome, and dropped references to technology that is distinctly modern. That fact that this left as no more than hints and never explained makes the backdrop tantalising and somehow mythical.
The first-person narration from the daughter, in the past tense further enhances the mythic quality, and a sense of doom; the story opens "Long before my mother destroyed the world, her experiments were quieter, more contained." So we know where this is going. The backbone of this story, like The Art of Space Travel, the previous one in the collection, is this mother/daughter relationship, although this is obviously far darker and more negative than that of Emily and Moolie, as mother pressures daughter (neither is given a name) through the promise of a fake love to become what the mother wants, despite her own wishes, but ultimately is saved by this and becomes greater than her parent.
You know, I think I've talked myself around.
Now, I know that many of the great "destruction by science" tales are not about arrogant scientists at all, or barely so - the progenitor of the genre, Frankenstein, is misread as such, and is a deeper story about a search for meaning and a creator - but just reading that trope tends to set my teeth on edge.
However, that is my reaction to that aspect of the story and is, perhaps, rather unfair. Because this is a fabulous piece of writing. Burton suggests the world as a backdrop - it is in Rome, including the great structures such as the Colosseum and the Senate on the Capitoline Hill, ruled over by Caesar. Is this scientist a witch or an alchemist? But we get reference to other cities that were not contemporaries of classical Rome, and dropped references to technology that is distinctly modern. That fact that this left as no more than hints and never explained makes the backdrop tantalising and somehow mythical.
The first-person narration from the daughter, in the past tense further enhances the mythic quality, and a sense of doom; the story opens "Long before my mother destroyed the world, her experiments were quieter, more contained." So we know where this is going. The backbone of this story, like The Art of Space Travel, the previous one in the collection, is this mother/daughter relationship, although this is obviously far darker and more negative than that of Emily and Moolie, as mother pressures daughter (neither is given a name) through the promise of a fake love to become what the mother wants, despite her own wishes, but ultimately is saved by this and becomes greater than her parent.
You know, I think I've talked myself around.
June 17, 2021
My eyes were her eyes. My lips were her lips and my shoulders, too, were hers, and so the world was geometrically composed, and everything I ever was or would become was threaded in me already, and manifest in her.
3.5 stars. These Tor shorts are perfect little bite sized treats of sci-fi.
Read it here: http://www.tor.com/2016/04/20/the-des...
3.5 stars. These Tor shorts are perfect little bite sized treats of sci-fi.
Read it here: http://www.tor.com/2016/04/20/the-des...
November 9, 2017
I'm taking a science fiction short story class this semester, and for extra credit, we can read unassigned stories on our own and respond to them. I chose this one, and damn, I'm so glad I did. I connected to it more than any of the other stories I've read for that class, and it's the only story that has made me truly excited for sci fi. I didn't know sci fi could be like this.
This is a story unlike all the other classic SF I've read. It's based on a mother-daughter relationship in a futuristic, fascist Rome. The mother, a scientist, is hungry for power and recognition, to do work no one has ever done before. Her daughter, from the very beginning a scientific first, bears the brunt of her mother's experimentation. And so begins a give and take, in which the mother slowly turns the daughter into a bionic being, replacing her body parts with artificial ones, while the daughter alternately wants to please her beloved mother and rebels against her.
“In me she found an outlet for her genius. Into me she’d poured all her knowledge, molten with need; she had taken cells from her ribs and fiddled with them under a microscope; five months later, gelatinous and gasping for breath, I was. It made the papers—I was the first parthenogenesis, the daughter without a father, the flesh of my mother’s flesh. I was proof of her greatness.”
"The Destroyer" is about women, power, domination, greed; it's a story about body and science, what it means to be human, explored through a female lens. It's damn cool, written gorgeously, and will make you think. If you have 20-30 minutes, I highly recommend it. I read it for free on Tor.com.
This is a story unlike all the other classic SF I've read. It's based on a mother-daughter relationship in a futuristic, fascist Rome. The mother, a scientist, is hungry for power and recognition, to do work no one has ever done before. Her daughter, from the very beginning a scientific first, bears the brunt of her mother's experimentation. And so begins a give and take, in which the mother slowly turns the daughter into a bionic being, replacing her body parts with artificial ones, while the daughter alternately wants to please her beloved mother and rebels against her.
“In me she found an outlet for her genius. Into me she’d poured all her knowledge, molten with need; she had taken cells from her ribs and fiddled with them under a microscope; five months later, gelatinous and gasping for breath, I was. It made the papers—I was the first parthenogenesis, the daughter without a father, the flesh of my mother’s flesh. I was proof of her greatness.”
"The Destroyer" is about women, power, domination, greed; it's a story about body and science, what it means to be human, explored through a female lens. It's damn cool, written gorgeously, and will make you think. If you have 20-30 minutes, I highly recommend it. I read it for free on Tor.com.
June 17, 2018
3.85 stars. A very unusual mother-daughter relationship and more in this SF short story.
Free to read on tor.com (use link provided by GR, or: http://www.tor.com/2016/04/20/the-des...).
Free to read on tor.com (use link provided by GR, or: http://www.tor.com/2016/04/20/the-des...).
March 20, 2019
Well that was a fast read, I’m surprised it’s so short, not a bad short story mind you especially towards the beginning had a real connection mother daughter, reality and overlaid with mad scientist mom and daughter who becomes her biggest science project, great setup good ideal but the execution how the story plays out is too truncated too compressed for the writing because when it’s that short a story each word every sentence counts. I’m afraid it just didn’t carry enough pathos mother daughter conflict you have a ton of options with that but this reads as a long first draft things don’t tie together but hang loosely in contrast to one another like all the Ancient Rome dictator evil empire references served more as an interesting backdrop and someone (Caesar) to play the ambitions, needs, and fears of the mother off of but it was never really much of the story. So a lot of interesting stages for the action but why this how is that well those are not really the concerns of the author in fact other than the daughter was made into some super bionic person that really impressed Mom’s boss, I really dont know what the point the book was trying to make, so sorry bout this but just three stars lack of direction and connection confusing message but it was a fast read.
June 17, 2018
4.5 it’s another excellent #scifi short that blew me away. Again my main issue is that is was that I wanted more! More story, more details, more background. Again I’m hoping this is the beginning of something! Beautiful writing and a very cool ending. I heartily recommend!
April 9, 2022
The Destroyer by author Tara Isabella Burton is a short story you can read for free on the Tor.com site https://www.tor.com/2016/04/20/the-de...
In a futuristic, fascistic Rome, a brilliant, unstable scientist proves that she can transcend the human body’s limitations. The test subject? Her own daughter. A mother-daughter mad scientist story, “The Destroyer” asks how far we’ll go to secure our own legacies — and how far we’ll run to escape them.
Great story! I loved the idea of Ancient Rome combined with future tech. That mad scientist mother, though. Eep!
Themes: Alternate history, ancient Rome, scientist, parthenogenesis, the grass is always greener elsewhere.
4 Stars
In a futuristic, fascistic Rome, a brilliant, unstable scientist proves that she can transcend the human body’s limitations. The test subject? Her own daughter. A mother-daughter mad scientist story, “The Destroyer” asks how far we’ll go to secure our own legacies — and how far we’ll run to escape them.
Great story! I loved the idea of Ancient Rome combined with future tech. That mad scientist mother, though. Eep!
Themes: Alternate history, ancient Rome, scientist, parthenogenesis, the grass is always greener elsewhere.
4 Stars
Read
May 16, 2025This is basically Thanos & Nebula but make it Roman with mummy issues.
4⭐️
4⭐️
February 20, 2023
ok tara this slayed. can you write more short stories please
October 5, 2018
This is a very well written thought provoking sci-fi short.
It will not take a long time to read it and you definitely should - https://www.tor.com/2016/04/20/the-de...
It will not take a long time to read it and you definitely should - https://www.tor.com/2016/04/20/the-de...
December 25, 2023
mad scientist uses her daughter as test subject in an alternative but still lifeless version of the Roman empire. will probably forget about it.
August 6, 2016
4.5 stars
This short story was fun, more than anything. Sci-fi Roman Empire is an unusual setting as well, so bonus points there.
In terms of plot, the mother-daughter mad scientist relationship bent reminded me of both The Girl with All the Gifts and The Body Electric. You can read it online here.
This short story was fun, more than anything. Sci-fi Roman Empire is an unusual setting as well, so bonus points there.
In terms of plot, the mother-daughter mad scientist relationship bent reminded me of both The Girl with All the Gifts and The Body Electric. You can read it online here.
December 30, 2016
What a great mix of history and futuristic science fiction. A well imagined world. A treat to read!
September 22, 2025
Rome has been rebuilt and a dictatorship under Caesar has been reenabled. A gifted cyberneticist clones herself and then turns her daughter into a cyborg, garnering attention and disgust in equal measure.
A fascinating look at compulsion and hunger for power. Burton makes us sympathise with the central character.
A fascinating look at compulsion and hunger for power. Burton makes us sympathise with the central character.
December 14, 2024
3.5 stars. Poignant, with a fairly unique villain presentation. A short story I listened to via the "Levar Burton Reads" podcast.
February 20, 2024
***Dinsdag 20 februari 2024***
⭐4 - liked it
Listened to this via LeVar Burton's podcast: LeVar Burton Reads. It is also a TOR.COM original and was published on April 20, 2016
I have a thing against theologians. It's not very rational, I fully admit that. It also feels a bit silly. Still, there is something in me that is like an eye-twitch the moment someone mentions they are a theologian. So when the introduction to the author mentioned that I was a bit hesitant to keep on listening.
I'm glad I did it though. Throughout the story I had this unheimlich feeling. It reminded me of a young person who told the interwebs about their parents. They hadn't mentioned that they got accepted into university so only when they were physically on the way, did they told them. The parents disowned them because they didn't wanted their child in university. The kids had predicted this and had acted accordingly. A lot of people didn't understand why the parents didn't think that this was a good thing, that they disowned their kid for daring to choose something different.
This story reminded me of that kid. But a bit more There is something about parents who want something better for their child but at the same time hurts them in the process. As an outsider you can easily see where a parent went wrong but as the parent... could you? It's a slippery slope. This story showed that slippery slope very well. And why a child would allow that.
Because at the end of the day, a child wants to love their parent. And they will endure horrible things just to get some glimpse of it. The best monsters indeed...
⭐4 - liked it
Listened to this via LeVar Burton's podcast: LeVar Burton Reads. It is also a TOR.COM original and was published on April 20, 2016
''There is nothing so evil as someone who doesn't look or act or sound necessarily evil. I think that the best monsters are the ones who.. look just like us. The best monsters are the ones that we love. The best monsters are the ones we have no reason to fear.'' LeVar Burton
I have a thing against theologians. It's not very rational, I fully admit that. It also feels a bit silly. Still, there is something in me that is like an eye-twitch the moment someone mentions they are a theologian. So when the introduction to the author mentioned that I was a bit hesitant to keep on listening.
I'm glad I did it though. Throughout the story I had this unheimlich feeling. It reminded me of a young person who told the interwebs about their parents. They hadn't mentioned that they got accepted into university so only when they were physically on the way, did they told them. The parents disowned them because they didn't wanted their child in university. The kids had predicted this and had acted accordingly. A lot of people didn't understand why the parents didn't think that this was a good thing, that they disowned their kid for daring to choose something different.
This story reminded me of that kid. But a bit more There is something about parents who want something better for their child but at the same time hurts them in the process. As an outsider you can easily see where a parent went wrong but as the parent... could you? It's a slippery slope. This story showed that slippery slope very well. And why a child would allow that.
Because at the end of the day, a child wants to love their parent. And they will endure horrible things just to get some glimpse of it. The best monsters indeed...
April 18, 2024
5.0 ⭐“It proved too long—the false foot dragged a few millimeters behind the real one—and so we amputated the other.”
**mild content spoilers**
♡ LBR 2024 ♡
I couldn’t have asked for a better start to the new year than with a fresh season of LeVar Burton Reads.
I love the fabled thought experiment, The Ship of Theseus. If you’ve never heard of it, I recommend checking it out and coming back to this review after.
I posit that the ship becomes a new ship with the most insignificant change, and that with every change of a nail, every change of a plank, you’re in a new ship. Just because it’s similar, doesn’t mean it isn’t new. The ship is still subject to the consequences of every minute change.
Our bodies are compositions of growth, systems, and functions, some in symphonic harmony, some in a state of discord. How we care for them matters. How we listen to and honor their individual needs will shape who and what we become.
The ship of Theseus plays out in us every day. Sometimes, to a harrowing conclusion that leaves us a shadow of our initial designs.
If someone aboard the ship has their own ideas about how to design a sleeker, slimmer, more perfect ship that can withstand oceanic warfare, at what point does the ship stop being a ship, and start being a weapon?
Thanks for reading and if you wanna chat about the latest LBR episodes, come join us at the LeVar Burton Reads Official Community.
- 📚☕♥
Goodreads Official Star Representation
5 - It was amazing
4 - I really liked it
3 - I liked it
2 - It was okay
1 - Did not like it.
**mild content spoilers**
♡ LBR 2024 ♡
I couldn’t have asked for a better start to the new year than with a fresh season of LeVar Burton Reads.
I love the fabled thought experiment, The Ship of Theseus. If you’ve never heard of it, I recommend checking it out and coming back to this review after.
I posit that the ship becomes a new ship with the most insignificant change, and that with every change of a nail, every change of a plank, you’re in a new ship. Just because it’s similar, doesn’t mean it isn’t new. The ship is still subject to the consequences of every minute change.
Our bodies are compositions of growth, systems, and functions, some in symphonic harmony, some in a state of discord. How we care for them matters. How we listen to and honor their individual needs will shape who and what we become.
The ship of Theseus plays out in us every day. Sometimes, to a harrowing conclusion that leaves us a shadow of our initial designs.
If someone aboard the ship has their own ideas about how to design a sleeker, slimmer, more perfect ship that can withstand oceanic warfare, at what point does the ship stop being a ship, and start being a weapon?
Thanks for reading and if you wanna chat about the latest LBR episodes, come join us at the LeVar Burton Reads Official Community.
- 📚☕♥
Goodreads Official Star Representation
5 - It was amazing
4 - I really liked it
3 - I liked it
2 - It was okay
1 - Did not like it.
April 22, 2021
An ambitious genius in futuristic Rome (which is like ancient Rome, only high-tech) makes her perfect clone-child, only to go on to want to make her into something more. And more. And more.
I loved the first two acts of this one, narrated by the manipulated clone-child/cyborg. The setting is vivid, the emotions raw as she's pushed by her mother's abuse. The third act lost me a little as I wasn't quite sure what had just happened to transition between the two scenarios, or how the clone-borg ends up the way she does. Love the writing even if I was confused by the story.
I loved the first two acts of this one, narrated by the manipulated clone-child/cyborg. The setting is vivid, the emotions raw as she's pushed by her mother's abuse. The third act lost me a little as I wasn't quite sure what had just happened to transition between the two scenarios, or how the clone-borg ends up the way she does. Love the writing even if I was confused by the story.
August 22, 2018
★★★★☆ (4/5)
A selection of my favourite passages from the book
• Long before my mother destroyed the world, her experiments were quieter, more contained. They did not obliterate continents. They did not rack up the dead
• and everything I ever was or would become was threaded in me already, and manifest in her.
• Like them I had the power to disappoint her.
• There is a caesura between all that was and all that is, between the city I loved and the city that I know now, between my mother’s city and my own
• I will walk out into the world she has left for me, and then with two sticks and a match I will build her up again.
A selection of my favourite passages from the book
• Long before my mother destroyed the world, her experiments were quieter, more contained. They did not obliterate continents. They did not rack up the dead
• and everything I ever was or would become was threaded in me already, and manifest in her.
• Like them I had the power to disappoint her.
• There is a caesura between all that was and all that is, between the city I loved and the city that I know now, between my mother’s city and my own
• I will walk out into the world she has left for me, and then with two sticks and a match I will build her up again.
March 14, 2024
A mad scientist clones herself to create a daughter and then slowly replaces the parts with improved versions. The daughter rebels against her mother's vision of herself. There is a lot of psychosis going on in this story. The mother often spouts that she's so great and no one can understand her, but I don't understand why she would feel the need to improve her daughter unless she feels she herself can be improved on. There is a lot of hints that the mother sees the daughter as her own bid for immortality and that's why she's angry when the daughter wants to be different. It was a very unsettling story, but very interesting.
March 1, 2018
I really enjoyed The Destroyer by Tara Isabella Burton. It’s set in a futuristic version of Rome ruled by Caesar and stars a daughter created by her scientist-mother. The world building is pretty interesting, which makes me sad that it isn’t longer. The mother had a lot of hubris because of her intellect which makes her make a lot of modifications to the daughter she created. I liked the main protagonist’s struggle for individuality and the portrayal of her relationship with her mother. My only real complaint is that I wish this was fleshed out more.
November 24, 2022
This is probably one of the best short stories I've read on Tor. I think the writing flowed really nicely and I loved the world-building and setting. The relationship between the mother and her daughter was very emotionally impactful. While the daughter is technically just another creation by her scientist mother, the relationship parallels a lot of toxic mother-daughter relationships. It was hard to read at times how the mother went out of her way to change her daughter, especially since she was made exactly in her image. This was a beautiful story that you can draw a lot of messages from.
December 4, 2024
2.5 stars, just barely rounded down
Listened via audiobook on LeVar Burton Reads
I wanted to like this story, but it just wasn't hitting like I needed it to. The most interesting part was the setting and required suspension of disbelief, but the execution wasn't solid enough to even keep that afloat. However, this is actually a case where I think I would've enjoyed it more if it weren't an audiobook, so I can't judge it too harshly.
I don't dislike it enough to say that I don't recommend it, but I also wouldn't recommend it.
Listened via audiobook on LeVar Burton Reads
I wanted to like this story, but it just wasn't hitting like I needed it to. The most interesting part was the setting and required suspension of disbelief, but the execution wasn't solid enough to even keep that afloat. However, this is actually a case where I think I would've enjoyed it more if it weren't an audiobook, so I can't judge it too harshly.
I don't dislike it enough to say that I don't recommend it, but I also wouldn't recommend it.
September 25, 2017
Didn't like the concept really. The genius mind women who make a baby a girl of her own from herself and at the same time make guinea pig of her. For me it just didn't make any sense. That girl didn't want to be a robot but her mom made it & at the end reach the Caesar (The Leader). Though the ending got that little bit surprise and I do like by knowing what will be final fate of that cruel mother...
2 from me out of 5...
2 from me out of 5...
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