Frankenstein Unbound

What if Victor Frankenstein and his monster were alive and in New Orleans? That's the basic premise of Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: Prodigal Son, which I finished this week. Even though the book has Mr. Koontz's name on it, I think a lot of the writing was done by his co-author, Kevin Anderson, based on the style and sometimes stilted nature of the writing. The characters were for the most part poorly drawn. The two police officers were annoying, and Victor Frankenstein was more caricature than character.

All this was too bad, because the story was excellent. This book had a chance to be something more than the entertaining but flawed read that it was. New Orleans was a good, if somewhat melancholy after Hurricane Katrina, selection as the setting, and the character of Deucalion, what the monster came to be called, was top-notch. Another plus was that the chapters were short, so that when the book digressed it was easy to charge ahead through the muck. So, in spite of the negatives, this book is definitely worth the read. I'm also really looking forward to getting the second one, when Mr. Koontz's co-author is Ed Gorman.