Prodigal Son (Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein #1)

This was the best one of the series. However, the series is kind of broken up into two sections. Books 1, 2 & 3 are all one story. Books 4&5 are another story with the same characters. Some might think it\’s all the same story continued. However, the books themselves are not individual stories. They just kind of stop – like a dead end road with no signs. So, you do need to commit to at least the first 3 books. In that respect, I didn\’t really care for the series. This book was the best.

There is a murderer on the loose and it is Carson and Michael\’s job to find the killer. Harker (another member of the New Orleans Homicide division) is attempting to find peace with himself. Deucalion only wishes to finish what he has started. Victor is trying to make his world perfect. Roy is trying to complete his mission of making himself perfect and finding the perfect girl for himself. This book was filled with many side stories, that, while I was reading it I was unsure how everything would fall into place. After you get a third of the way into the story, you realize that you are following two different stories, one of Carson and Michael along with the New Orleans Homicide division and the other of Victor and Deucalion. When the conclusion of the novel comes about everything fits into place. When I first started reading this novel I was blown away by the amount of characters that I was following. The novel started off following four different people all with different story lines. I was unsure of exactly how I liked that but, I believe that it really worked out. I also wasn\’t happy with the amount of jumping around between stories. It seemed that every new chapter (which consists of about three pages on my kindle) we were headed to a different person. I was left wondering how anything was really going to advance with the amount of jumping around. It soon became apparent that all of the jumping around led to one story line. I really liked the book and once I picked it up I couldn\’t put it down. I loved the developing story line and never knowing what was going to happen next. I always had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen, I was never able to get it partly right (i.e. killer is found, starts running, gets caught, dies. When in reality killer is caught, runs away, starts to change, gets in a tight spot, almost makes it out, gets killed and yet gets away at the same time). I didn\’t like all of the jumping around. I never felt like I got to know the characters in the beginning of the book. By the end of the book I had a good knowledge on the characters but I was lacking some form of attachment to a individual character. I also didn\’t like how none of the characters really developed through the story. Carson was Carson from beginning to end, Michael was Michael from beginning to end etc. The only one who really changed throughout the book had such a small part in the actual story line that the change was easily overlooked. Overall the story line was amazing and fast paced. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes mysteries and especially anyone who likes mysteries where they are drawn to a mystery and then the end comes and the reader is like \’What just happened, I\’m blown away\’.

I had no idea it was going to be a comic book ! I was expecting a novel.

Set in exotic New Orleans, Dr. Victor Helios (aka Dr. Frankenstein) is still alive, and still practicing his wicked ways behind the façade of running a legitimate business called Helios Biovision. At the abandoned Hands Of Mercy Hospital, instead of simply reanimating corpses, Victor is using new technology not only to extend his own life but to create life from scratch. His new technology includes direct-to-brain downloads so his creations emerge fully ready to take on their roles in life. Creations like Erika Four, his lovely custom made wife, the fourth he\’s gone through so far; and Randal Six, who\’s been created with autism so that Victor can experiment with using autism to develop more focused workers. The monster, born of the grave, also immortal and now calling himself Deucalion, is living in Tibet with a group of monks. When he receives a letter informing him that Victor is still alive, Deucalion decides he must travel into the real world again to find a way to destroy Victor. He travels to New Orleans and moves into the Luxe Theater with his old carnival friend Jelly Biggs. Detectives Carson O\’Conner and Michael Maddison are assigned to the case of a new serial killer who\’s killing young ladies and removing specific body parts from them (hands, eyes, ears, etc). The bodies of three men missing internal organs complicate the case. The killer has been nicknamed The Surgeon, and partners O\’Conner and Maddison must find him before he strikes again. Aside from her tight work schedule, Carson is also caring for her autistic younger brother Arnie. Strange bodies turn up at the morgue, Carson runs into a mysterious man claiming there are more like him \”out there\”, and Victor continues his evil experiments. Reviving Frankenstein sounds like it would be a weak or clichéd idea, but Koontz and Anderson pull it off. Despite pilfered ideas from the old Black & White movies The Frozen Dead and The Brain That Wouldn\’t Die, not to mention a character similar to one already created in Koontz\’s \’Hideaway\’, there\’s enough new and unique material in the story to make it dynamic and highly entertaining. Watch out, the book ends in a real cliffhanger, so you\’ll want to have book two, \’City Of Night\’, already beside your elbow. Although I became disappointed in Koontz after \’Mr. Murder\’, it seems he\’s regained his old formula with this Frankenstein series and written a seat-of-your-pants novel. I recommend this book to horror and thriller fans. Enjoy!

As a fan of Koontz\’s work and of the classic Frankenstein tale I don\’t know why it took me so long to get around to this. I believed this would be a rewrite of the original but it is much better than that. It is a sequel to the tale rather than the book, this give Koontz more scope for his own story that weaves perfectly into Shelley\’s imagination without being tied to details, i.e. inferring that Shelley wrote the book based on a story she had heard which turned out to be true. This book introduces us to the monster and the man two hundred years after the original storm and the reversal of their roles, this will not disappoint and leaves you hungry for more.

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