Customer Reviews
A book with no ending
This books begins slow, moves along at a faster clip in the middle and then, without warning, abandons the reader without an ending or even an inkling another book is coming. Talk about frustrating! Now I see Koontz has book #2 ready to sell his legions of fans, who can overlook what now seems as an obvious effort to milk two sales out of what should have been one book. No doubt I will bite..no pun intended..but not happily and hoping this is not his version of a Frankenstein series.
Very Original, Funny Dialogue
Dean Koontz's "Frankenstein" is based on a 60 minute TV pilot that Koontz wrote that was picked up by USA network. When USA asked him to write a two hour pilot and possibly follow it with a series he obliged. However, USA then took the script rewrote it, changing all most all of it, Koontz withdrew from the project. Now he has decided to put it in book form and while it entertaining and funny there are a few problems with it. Firstly, unlike Koontz's other books the characters aren't developed as fully as they could be. Secondly, it ends a bit abruptly, but there's a second book coming so... But the book is pretty good and is one of the better Frankenstein remakes to come out in recent years.
The chapters introduce us to a number of characters; first we have Carson O'Connor.
Carson is a girl, in case the name confused you. She's a homicide detective, with an autistic brother who is currently looking for a serial killer who calls himself The Surgeon.
The Surgeon has been tracking down women and taking the body parts that appeal to him in the hopes of compiling the perfect woman. He doesn't consider what he's going to do when he has all the parts though. Carson's partner Michael Maddison has crush on her, although due to their partnership is reluctant to admit it. Michael has the best dialogue in the book, every time he speaks it's a wisecrack and some of it is laugh-out-loud funny.
Then we're introduced to Victor Helios, a biotech tycoon who is actually Victor Frankenstein, over two hundred years old. We also have Decaulion, the original Frankenstein. A deformed, tattooed man hunting Victor to finally kill his master. And Randal Six, an autistic creation of Victor who longs for happiness and sees the chance to find it in Carson's brother Arnie. Now that I've established that, Victor is creating a race of "Frankensteins" he calls the New Race which he will eventually use to destroy us; the Old Race. Koontz has came up with a brilliant idea and the only problem with the book is the character development. Not that the characters aren't well developed, they're just not well developed for a Koontz novel. B+.
Koontz is getting even better over time.
This is a wonderful twist on the classic. The characters are very well rounded and I was grabbed from the beginning. I now and then ponder how the biologically impossible events in the book could actually be brewing in someones own lab at this very moment. Mr. Koontz takes today's traditional underdog and makes him not someone to pity but someone to perhaps admire. My only negative on the book is that I am hooked and will make sure I quickly purchase the next in the series.
If you like seeing the dark side of life let in a little light, you will undoubtedly become a Koontz addict as have I. Don't plan on doing anything else until you finish this one.
I also highly recommend THE FACE. Another dark side trying to usurp the light. Excellent, excellent, excellent books.