Monday, August 17, 2009

Frankenstein Book 2 City of Night Dean Koontz


Claudia and Rick have read both books of this reworking of the classic tale by Mary Shelly and “Jill Baby” is deep into the first book. There will be a third volume, there has to be because this one had no ending, it just fades away at what should be a very important stage of the story.

The time is 240 years since Victor Frankenstein who now calls himself Victor Helios created his first “monster”. The creature still lives and calls himself Deucalion (the son of Prometheus). Apparently, Deucalion has learned to control his rage through years of study at a monastery and he has learned that his creator has managed to keep himself alive for over 200 years and has created a special race of non humans to serve him. Deucalion has vowed to kill his maker. Victor Helios is one bad guy!! He has managed to make duplicates of major figures in the city of New Orleans this includes the Mayor, the Police Chief and many others in authority. These non humans are programmed for special duties; they are stronger and faster and eventually, Victor Helios will turn them loose to kill all humans. Frankenstein continues to perform bizarre experiments some of which turn out very badly; he destroys them and buries them in a special dump that is used for both human and non human bodies and is run by disgusting low class non human people who hate humans and savor the opportunity to perform evil deeds and mutilation on the human bodies that are sent to them.
There is a man and woman detective team who know about Frankenstein and are intent on destroying him with the help of Deucalion. The team is followed by an assassination couple who bring very dark humor and brutal conversation to their characters. Frequently, the dialogue in this novel is repugnant especially when it gets into descriptions of killing and burial rituals by the non humans.
Victor is mad; he is looking for perfection but he can not find it in the culture or makeup of the human race. He has made five wives, none of which are good enough for him. It is, not yet, clear how he expects things to be when he has killed off all humans because one of the prime motivations of his non humans is to kill humans and when humans are gone how will the monsters fare?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Wow! It sounds like Dean's pot may have boiled over a bit with this storyline. It does make me want to go back and read Mary Shelly's masterpiece again, though.