Sunday, January 2, 2011

Review: Dean Koontz's "Dead and Alive" - Frankenstein Book 3 of the Frankenstein series

Dean Koontz continues his tale of the long-lived Victor Helios (nee Frankenstein), his original monster Deucalion, wives Erika (if you read the series you understand the plurality) and a pair of New Orleans police detectives.

I read book 2 without having read book 1 and got along OK. I don't think it would be such a good idea to read this one without having read the previous.... but I can't say it's such a great idea to read this one in any case.

I think Deucalion is the most interesting character (at least in the second book) and he's a bit player in this one. The detectives seem to be spectators in this book and are generally uninteresting. This book has a couple of 'new race' characters that transform into monsters and a killing machine "Chameleon" that turns out to be all hype and little execution.

For those who have read previous books, this one (presumably and hopefully the last) pretty much wraps it up. For others, don't bother.

I'm glad I got this from the library (another e-book) rather than buying. Koontz seems to be concentrating on his 'real' novels and he wrote this one just to close up the series. Let's hope it doesn't come back to life in as weak a form as book 3.

2 comments:

  1. Wayne,

    Not exactly an overwhelming endorsement--or even an underwhelming one either.

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  2. Being a Koontz fan, this was a real disappointment.

    Fortunately I liked the new Clancy book. I'll need to post a review of that. I haven't gotten to the new Koontz (non-Frankenstein) novel yet, but it's on the shelf.

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