Ten years after the loss of his entire family to madness and death, Ernest Frankenstein finds himself compelled to return to the city of his birth, Geneva, in order to discover if his elder brother, Viktor, might still be alive. Only Viktor can provide the answers to questions, which have long plagued Ernest. The quest for answers will force Ernest to confront demons, both internal and external, from his past, which refuse to be at peace and which ultimately will endanger both he and his new family. Hunted across Europe their only hope may lie with a French spy, Ernest’s childhood friend, and a mysterious gypsy girl whose people believe that Ernest will lead humanity to its salvation or final destruction.
This is not a rewriting of the Mary Shelley classic; it hasn’t been twisted around, given a new plot or new characters. This book continues from the point Mary Shelley ended in Frankenstein, and does so in a seamless manner.
I’m probably like most lovers of the classics, when something like this is released, never certain of what is going to appear between the covers. This book will really open your eyes and make you think. It is a compelling and very intelligently written book and it explores some new directions that hadn’t occurred to me whilst reading Mary Shelley’s work. In many aspects it actually goes as far as to improve upon the ideas the original work ended with.
I have often wondered what happened to the remaining family of Viktor Frankenstein after his (supposed) death in the Arctic; this book explores that question very well, and in-depth. In building and developing the characters, the Author did an outstanding job of not straying too far from the original work when it came to their past history. It was apparent that not only had the Author read Mary Shelley’s work, he had studied it in-depth to make sure his ‘sequel’ was credible and stuck to the basic premise of her original work, grafting it to his own writing but still managing to make his novel very much his own and, very much an original piece of work.
The dialogue is very well written, and stays true and appropriate for the time in which the book is set. It fills each page with mystery and intrigue in an already dark and ominous world that truly transported me into the past. The novel has a good pace, not too slow and not too fast, and there is a lot happening, oh boy is there. Not too much that you become bogged down and lost, but enough to make you want to keep turning the page to continue on with the journey. The end of the book is an opening for the next in this series of 3, but didn’t end leaving the reader with more questions than answers, so this could be read as a standalone, however, I defy anyone to be able to do that.
I was very intrigued as to how the Author would portray the first encounter with the ‘monster’, and I was not disappointed at all. Not only the first, but all encounters, live up to that terrifying portrait that was painted in the original; a seemingly insurmountable challenge that the Author overcame with ease. It didn’t make me change my original thoughts on the ‘monster’ at all, only served to strengthen a possibility I had put forward during my ‘A’ level Literature class.
This is a must read for all lovers of the classics, and anyone who loves a good read with plenty of unforeseen twists and turns. It is an exciting read one which I found very hard to put down and kept me up far later than it should have as I wanted to read to the end. Once at the end, it left me with a need to plunge straight into the other 2 books. Yes, it really is that good, and I wish it had been around when I was doing my English Literature ‘A’ levels.
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